Closer
by Opus the Penguin
Summary: A grievously wounded Inuyasha may not survive until dawn, ane even dawn may bring nothing but madness and death. As Sango wrestles with the possibility that Inuyasha might die in her arms, Kagome struggles to make a fateful decision of her own.
1. The Lake

            Sango irritably turned her pillow over for the fourth time in the past hour.  Tonight it was putting on a stunning display of its magical skill to be hard and soft in exactly the wrong places no matter which was it was arranged.   Her neck and shoulders were stiff and sleep was all too elusive tonight, so her pillow was far more infuriating than usual.  In a final fit of frustration she pushed it aside and contented herself to fold her arms behind her head, staring up at the clear, starry sky.  Her aching shoulders protested the position, but she ignored the dull throbbing and tried to lose herself in the night sky.

            After a few long moments she realized she was wide awake.  She heaved a sigh and sat up, crossly thinking that it was impossible to _try_ to drift off to sleep.   Glancing around, it seemed that everyone else was out cold.   A few feet away Kagome was snoring her tiny, girlish snore.  Shippo was curled up in her arms like teddy bear.  On the far side of Kagome lay Miroku, flat on his back with his limbs splayed like a dead raccoon and his mouth open wide enough attract nesting owls.  Under normal circumstances she would have found the scene amusing, but at this point the only emotion the sight evoked from Sango was vague jealousy that _they_ could sleep so easily. 

            Thinking that perhaps a short walk might cure her of her insomnia, Sango slid out of her bedroll and quietly stepped into her shoes.  She'd been sleeping in her clothes, so only a cursory check to make sure everything was in place was necessary.  After a brief hesitation she opted on the side of caution, picking up her katana and sliding it through her belt.  The group had bedded down not far from a small lake, and Sango set off slowly in its general direction.

            The night was comfortably warm, but the breeze was crisp enough to raise the hairs on the back of Sango's neck whenever it brushed over her.  The sky was clear and the full moon provided more than adequate light, so her progress was swift.  Although her well-honed senses detected no hint of demons, her training wouldn't allow her to completely relax and she took care to move quietly and carefully down the path.  The trip was uneventful, however, the closest thing to a demonic encounter being an impressively sized raccoon, and within what seemed like a very few minutes she found herself at the lake. 

            Sango made her way down the bank, deeply breathing the cool, clean air blowing off the lake.  The moonlight danced across the water, throwing waves of soft light onto the trees surrounding the lake.  She stooped down and picked up a handful of stones, tossing them one by one into the lake and smiling to herself as each ripple sent the moonlight into a sparkling dance.  Sango ran her hands through her hair and stretched her tired back, finally letting herself relax.

"Are you ever gonna sit down or were you planning on blocking the view all night?"

            Sango nearly jumped out her skin, wheeling around to find Inuyasha perched on a log.  

"Inuyasha, I…"

"Did I stutter?  Either sit down or at least move.  You're blockin' the view."

            The familiar rage that came only from interacting with Inuyasha boiled up in her chest, but the serenity of the rest of the scene helped her keep it check.  Sango glanced around for a place to sit and was genuinely taken aback  when Inuyasha scooted over, albeit almost imperceptibly, to share the log.  She settled down beside him, giving him as much distance as possible, and once again began to take in the lake and the lovely night.  For his part, Inuyasha acknowledged her with the faintest of nods and did the same.

            They sat together in silence for a long time, chirping crickets and the songs of  night birds the only sounds.  It wasn't unpleasant, although Inuyasha's company wasn't necessarily the most soothing thing in the world.  Every so often she chanced a look at him, each time finding his eyes fixed on the lake, deep in thought.  It didn't take much insight to understand that he wasn't actually seeing the lake.  After a long while, Sango decided to call this a quasi-bonding experience with Inuyasha and head back to bed, but then he spoke.

"I'm only askin' you this because you're the only one around to ask right now, okay?"  

            She was so startled that he had actually said something that she wasn't sure how to respond.

"Okay?" Inuyasha demanded quietly.

"Okay…" she finally said, unsure where this was going.

"Do I love Kagome?"

"How can I tell you that, Inuyasha?"  She asked, stunned.  

"Because I don't know."  He whispered.  "Because I don't remember how it feels."

            He was still looking at the lake so she couldn't read his face.  His voice, though, was so matter-of-fact that she was almost certain it was a put on, that his calm was an illusion he was trying hard to maintain. 

"Well…" she began, choosing her words carefully.  "You loved Kikyo.  Do you feel the same way about Kagome as you felt about her?"

"Kikyo."  Inuyasha repeated blankly, the name echoing in the darkness.  "Sango, when Kikyo shot me, when I was pinned to the Sacred Tree…I was dead, I was dead but I was dreaming.  Dreaming for longer than you've been alive.  Do you have any idea what I dreamt of for so long?"

            Sango traced her foot along the ground, not sure what to say.  After a long pause, she answered him.

"Kikyo?"

"Yes," he began slowly, "Of Kikyo's throat, of tearing it out.  Of running my claws through her skin, feeling her blood gushing between my fingers…"

            He looked at her out of the corner of his eye just in time see her inch away from him.  His gaze shifted back to the lake and he continued.

"How could I have really loved her if I wanted to kill her?  If I judge how I feel about Kagome by that standard, will I want to kill _her_ the first time she does something to betray me?"

            Sango knew she needed to say something now, but wasn't sure what.    

"But you've had the chance to kill Kikyo since then, and you haven't."

"That's true."  

            His voice trailed away, and Sango shifted uncomfortably, wondering if it was okay to leave.  She wasn't sure what, but something kept her in place.  As they sat in silence, she studied Inuyasha's face.  It was hard to tell because of the moonlight pouring off the lake, but it looked almost as if there were glistening trails running down his face.  Had he been crying?

"Would you kill Kohaku?" Inuyasha asked at last.

            For the briefest of instants, Sango's hand itched to slap him for bringing  her little brother into this, but instead she surprised herself by answering.

"Yes," she said, "if it came to that, I'd kill him.   I'd kill him to set him free from Naraku and from everything Naraku has made him do."

"And you love him?"

"More than anything else in the world." She said without any doubt or hesitation.

            Inuyasha shut his eyes, a smiling to himself in a decidedly unhappy way.

"They even smell the same, you know that?"

"What?"  Sango asked, perplexed by the sudden digression.

"Kagome and Kikyo."  Inuyasha replied.  "They smell exactly the same.  I guess you wouldn't notice that.  To me, because of what I…to me that's a big deal.  For the longest time I even expected Kagome to act like Kikyo because they smelled alike."

"Inuyasha…" Sango began, even though she had no idea how she intended to finish the sentence.

"They feel the same way, too.  When I hold them, I mean.  They're so much alike, different incarnations of the same spirit.  I don't know if what I feel when I look at Kagome is just a remnant of what I felt for Kikyo.  I haven't figured out yet what part of Kagome I care for, if it's the part that makes her Kagome or if it's the part that's leftover from Kikyo."

 "You've gone to the future to bring Kagome back when she was gone."  Sango said.

"That's true, but I've also seen Kikyo so many times that the rest of you never knew about."  Inuyasha sighed.  "That sounds really bad.  I miss Kagome when she's gone but I also take any chance I can to see Kikyo again…"

            Another silence fell between them, and Sango found herself fiddling girlishly with her hair in a way she despised.  Inuyasha sighed and shook his head as if trying to rattle his gloomy thoughts out of his ears.  Unable to find the will to get up and walk away, but desperate to change the subject, Sango was the first to speak.

"When I was a little girl they used to say there was a kappa in this lake…" She began, intending to tell a meandering story until such a time  as she could make her escape.

            Inuyasha chuckled, and the chuckle eventually grew into out and out laughter.  Sango gave him a confused look, unprepared for this change of demeanor.  He caught her questioning look and composed himself enough to explain.

"Isn't that the perfect metaphor for life, Sango?  It all looks so beautiful on the surface, but deep down there's a horrible little monster waiting to suck your liver out your ass."

            Something about Inuyasha's succinct explanation of the nature of the universe struck her as funny, and a smile slowly crept across Sango's face.  Inuyasha met her smile with one of his own and then pantomimed a kappa performing its disgusting eating habit, complete with crossed eyes, waggling tongue, and the wettest, most disgusting slurping noises she'd heard since the last time she watched Miroku eat.  Sango laughed aloud, her voice squeaking in delight, which sent Inuyasha into his own fit of laughter.  They laughed together for a long time, and by the time they'd finished they didn't even realize that they were sitting shoulder to shoulder.


	2. The Rain

After a cursory glance to make sure no one was watching, Inuyasha flopped unceremoniously to the ground and stretched luxuriously.  Although the sun was climbing high into the mid-morning sky the grass was still cool and slick with dew, and he welcomed the clean, fresh scent as it washed over his senses.  There were no trees on hillside he had claimed, so the vibrantly blue sky filled his vision.  Inuyasha let his eyes drift shut and listened to the birds singing in the nearby woods.  Though he would have denied it had anyone mentioned it to him, he was smiling.

            It wasn't often that he indulged himself like this.  Somewhere deep in his being he had often wished, without quite acknowledging it to himself, that he could fill his life with little more than his present activity.  He loved the forests, and the wilds in general, and could not help but rue his inability to fully appreciate them of late because of the recent chaos in his life.

_Of course I had fifty years to do nothing but appreciate the forest_, he thought to himself bitterly, his smile dissolving.

            His chest throbbed dully as old memories chased away the pleasant diversion of lounging in the sun.  Although he carried with him no scar, the wound from Kikyo's arrow never seemed to have fully healed.  Perhaps the remnants of her spell still burned within him, or perhaps he simply remembered the pain of that arrow too well to ever fully be free of it.  Whatever the reason, from time to time he could still feel the arrow's bite as sharply as he felt it when first it pierced his breast.

            His mood ruined, Inuyasha sat up and sourly looked around.  He could smell rain clouds somewhere in the distance.   Heaving a sigh, he decided it would be best to gather up the others and try to cover some ground before they were overtaken by the approaching storm.  

*****

            They had been able to stay ahead of the dark clouds all afternoon, thanks in no small part to Inuyasha's belligerent motivation, but the storm finally caught up with them as evening approached.  Although the rain was pounding intensely and unseasonably cold, they had been able to press on for the better part of an hour before it became obvious that the worst was yet to come.  The decision was made to pitch camp for the night, but this in and of itself was not an end to their ordeal.  They had not been prepared for such inclement weather, and it was nearly an hour before Inuyasha and Miroku had finished building a makeshift lean-to against the side of an old oak tree.

            Huddled uncomfortably close under their tiny, leaking shelter, the five travelers were just as cold and only slightly less wet as they would have been in the open air.  The lean-to was not particularly sturdy, and faced with the storm's buffeting winds it threatened to collapse.  Saying that he would rather be uncomfortable all night than try to build another of the damned things, Inuyasha sat opposite from his companions, bracing the lean-to with his back while they rested against the tree.  Before Miroku could be harangued into doing his share of the work, the monk fell into a deep and thoroughly unconvincing sleep.

Kagome's clothes were much lighter than her companions' and, having found herself soaked through to the skin within the first fifteen minutes, she was now cocooned with Shippo in Inuyasha's cloak.  For his part, Inuyasha more than made up for his altruism by bitterly complaining about everything from the cramped accommodations to Miroku's need of a bath.  

Sango had a front row seat for all of this, for she had fled to the far side of Kagome to put some distance between herself and Miroku's roaming hands.  Through years of training the monk had somehow developed the ability to grope in his sleep.  Apparently, however, this skill was developed enough to detect Inuyasha's venomous gaze before Kagome could fall victim to Miroku's lechery.  The monk's hand retreated meekly back to his own lap.

While that crisis had been averted, Sango now found herself faced with a new dilemma.  Yet again, her neck was far too stiff and uncooperative to let her drift off.  No one else was awake, so there was no hope of conversation to pass the time.  For a long time she simply sat there with her knees drawn up to her chest watching Kagome and Shippo sleep.  This obviously couldn't hold her attention forever, and after what seemed like a very long while she simply stared at the ground.  Listening to storm and the water dripping through the shelter was almost hypnotic, and even if it didn't put her to sleep it at least put her in a relaxing daze.  Sango let out a small sigh.  It was beginning to look as if she'd have learn to live with insomnia.

"Jeeze, don't you ever sleep?"

            Sango almost jumped out of her skin.  Apparently Inuyasha hadn't been asleep after all. 

"_You're _ one to talk" Sango said, surprised to find herself smiling.  

A trickle of rainwater found its way through a gap in the lean-to and ran down Inuyasha's bare chest.  A barely imperceptible shiver rippled through him.  Sango looked away for a moment, embarrassed that she had been watching him closely enough to notice it.

"I think I have a better excuse than you tonight."  Inuyasha said, gesturing at the burden resting against his back.  His tone  wasn't quite as caustic as Sango was used to.

            She smiled more openly this time, nodding.

"I suppose you do."

            Inuyasha chuckled to himself in his usual vaguely snide way, then folded his arms against his chest.  Another small gap appeared in the shelter, and beads of water began racing down his shoulders.  Steeling himself more against the irritation than the cold itself, he lowered his head and closed his eyes.  His white hair, unnaturally pristine, spilled over his face.  A remnant of his demon lineage, Inuyasha's was a purer white than any human's, and even in the darkness it seemed to almost shine.  Sango idly wondered how it would feel to run her hands through that hair.

            _Where did that come from?_

            Sango felt herself flush.  She looked away from him again, back to where Kagome lay sleeping with Shippo.  Kagome, who loved Inuyasha.  Kagome, whom Inuyasha loved.  It seemed that for those two it was only a matter of time, as if their love was written in the stars themselves.  Sango was ashamed of herself for even entertaining the thought.

            _The thought of what?_

            Sango didn't let herself answer the question.  It was just his hair, after all.  Just curiosity, curiosity and nothing more.  After all, she had to think about _something if she was going to just sit here all night with no sleep.  Why not Inuyasha's hair?_

            _Because you wouldn't be embarrassed if you were just thinking about his hair._

            That unbidden thought echoed through her brain like a shout.  There was no way, no possible she was entertaining any thoughts of _that nature about Inuyasha.  She let her gaze roam over him, her eyes drinking in every detail.   It was just that he was so unique.  The hair, the ears, those eyes the color of amber in the sunlight.  Just a unique combination.  Visually entertaining.  She was just letting herself notice it in the last few days.  Their conversation at the lake had convinced her that he wasn't quite the shallow jerk she'd thought, so now she could see him more clearly for what he really was.  And if he happened to be sort of handsome, what  was the harm in admitting that?_

            _He's handsome now?_

            That was another thought she didn't realize was there until it had bubbled to the surface.  Sango shook her head as furiously as she dared in the cramped darkness.  She was just tired and her mind was playing games, that was all.  That's all there was to it.

"Sango?"  

            Inuyasha's voice was soft, a gentle whisper that Sango had never heard before.  She look up, startled, and fell into his warm amber eyes.  He was looking at her differently than usual, and Sango thought she saw confusion in his face.

"Were you staring at me just now?"

            Her fists clenched in her kimono and she looked at the ground.  Even though her hair had fallen over her face, she was sure he could see her blushing in the darkness.  Her heart was pounding and she didn't know why.  It was a simple question, but a thousand answers raced through her mind as inexplicable panic washed over her.  She could crazily feel her heart pounding in her throat, and was terrified almost to the point of tears as she heard herself answer.  

"Yes."

            It was only the tiniest of whispers that snuck past her lips into night air, but to Sango it seemed far too loud.


	3. The Evening

            No other words passed between them that night in the storm.  After an eternity of silence, Inuyasha shut his eyes and rested his head against his arms.  Sango sat in the darkness for a long time, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm.  Although she wasn't completely sure why she was so flustered, she had a nagging feeling that, for the briefest of moments, the young woman buried deep in her heart had somehow overpowered the demon hunter that also dwelt there.  By and by her usual self regained the upper hand, and after a time her calm returned.  Perhaps it was because her panic had worn her out, but soon Sango's vision grew soft and she drifted off to sleep.

*****

            Inuyasha perched in a tree, watching the sunset wash the horizon in its warm light.  He was exhausted.  The group had been traveling since the first light of morning, and he had seen precious little sleep the previous night.  The day's journey had been a chore if ever there was one, and Inuyasha relished the opportunity to finally give his sore legs a rest.  

            What he did not relish, however, was his mind's curious habit of drifting back to Sango whenever he let it wander.  If not the most sensitive man in the world, he was nonetheless quite perceptive, and he knew _something_ had happened last night regardless of whether or not he knew what it was.  He had an inkling of what it might have been, but it didn't make any sense.  He had seen something in her eyes while she looked at him, and to him it seemed very much as if she was seeing him as something other than a simple traveling companion.  What made even less sense was that, but for a moment, he thought he had seen her the same way.  That simply would not do.

            He was already a man of two loves, and even if he could accept that situation as a matter of fate which was working hard to rectify, he simply  could not justify adding another woman to his heart, even if it were only in passing.  Besides, what reason did he have to even entertain the idea of an infatuation with Sango?  A long look in the middle of the night?  A talk by the lake about loving other women?  

_Stupid_, he thought, shaking his head in self-disgust.  _What am I even thinking about this for? Nothing happened._

Although he was not by nature a man given to fleeing from uncomfortable situations, he had nonetheless found himself avoiding his companions all day, mostly under the guise of "scouting ahead".  He felt better away from Sango's gaze.  Not to mention Kagome's.  He couldn't quite make himself look at Kagome, even though he was irritated at himself for feeling guilty.  He hadn't even _done anything, just looked._

"Just looked," he repeated to himself, watching the last rays of sunlight disappear beyond the horizon.

*****

"It appears that something is troubling Inuyasha," Miroku stated matter-of-factly as he pitched a handful of twigs into the campfire.  "He seems even more antisocial than usual today."

            Kagome shook her head glumly.  The same words had been perched on her lips for hours.  Inuyasha had been extra aloof ever since they broke camp in the morning, and as  the day wore on her annoyance had given way to worry.  She was used to Inuyasha being rude, not avoiding her completely.

"I wonder if _I_ did something," she said at last, shooing Kirara from her lap and  resting her chin in her hands.

"Maybe he's still mad about holding up the shelter all night in the rain," Shippo chimed in.

            Miroku frowned and jabbed at the fire with a stick.  His brow was furrowed in thought.

"Inuyasha is not one to withhold his feelings.  He's never had any problem voicing his displeasure with any of us before."

            Kagome nodded, her softly sculpted face dark with concern.  Her mind spun with possible explanations, but few of them seemed to add up to anything.  In the time she had known Inuyasha, she had become aware of only one dilemma about which he was prone to keep to himself.  Her mind fixed on that particular possibility, and she mulled over it in silence for several minutes.

"Could Kikyo have something to do with it?" Kagome said at last, practically spitting Kikyo's name.  "She's just about the only thing that Inuyasha won't talk to us about."

"That may very well be the case," Miroku said, his voice betraying the unease that his face did not.  "If that's true then we must be on our guard.  If Kikyo has contacted Inuyasha again, or vice versa, we can expect serious trouble."

            An icy finger ran down Kagome's spine.  Ghost, golem, or whatever she may be, Kikyo terrified her in a way few of the other entities she had encountered could match.  The very idea that in some way that _creature_ was a part of herself was enough to chill her to the bone.  Even more disturbing was the very real belief, lodged in her heart like a sharpened icicle, that Inuyasha's love for his lost paramour was still very fresh despite the alien incarnation that she had taken.  It certainly seemed possible enough.  After all, who wouldn't want to rekindle a love lost for half a century?

Though she rarely spoke of it, she had worried about such things many times since that fateful night in the forest so long ago.  She  remembered all too well the terrible emptiness that came with watching Inuyasha and Kikyo in one another's arms.  Although she had watched that scene play out in her mind's eye so many times that it no longer cut her as deeply as it once did, she also knew well enough that she wasn't prepared to bear witness to another such display.  

_There's a thought to keep you awake at night_, Kagome thought bitterly, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging herself.  _Inuyasha and Kikyo, sitting in a tree…_

*****

            Sango gazed solemnly at her companions as they conversed around the fire.  Although she had refrained from joining them this evening, instead opting to rest against a tree under the guise of standing watch, she knew they were talking about Inuyasha.  Through her eavesdropping she had gleaned enough to know that they suspected that Kikyo lay at the heart of Inuyasha's troubles.  While that may have been true enough, Sango thought it more likely that it was she was the one responsible for Inuyasha's evasive behavior.  Sango sighed unhappily and leaned back against the tree.  Under ordinary circumstances there were few things she enjoyed more than sitting in the grass on a warm summer evening, but tonight she couldn't find any pleasure in it.

             She had made Inuyasha uncomfortable, she knew that much.  Moreover, she had given all of her companions cause for false concern about their friend's well-being.  She supposed that their fears could be allayed if she simply explained to them what had happened, but that wasn't a course of action she was prepared to take.  In their months together she and Kagome had grown very close, and she feared what her small betrayal might do to their friendship.

_Betrayal?_

            Sango pulled a handful of grass from the soil and idly tossed it into the air, watching its manic dance as it raced back to the earth.  She didn't know why she felt so strongly about all this.  She supposed that most other people wouldn't feel like some sort of traitor for having a passing thought about the lover of an acquaintance.  

_You know its not in passing.  You've been thinking about him all day._

            Sango frowned.  The truth was uncomfortable even when it came from herself.  She had been longing to talk to Inuyasha all afternoon and was a little disappointed that he had been avoiding her.  She needed to talk to him eventually, just to clear things up about last night.  Not in any deep way, of course.

_I just want to let him know why I was staring_.

            Her next thought came unbidden, and she winced to herself at its candidness.

_And to ask why he noticed_.

            

            For a few long seconds Sango really thought she might cry.  This wasn't how it was supposed to be.  She didn't _want feelings for Inuyasha.  Inuyasha was already in love more deeply than she had even __read about.  It simply wasn't right to complicate things for him any more than they already were.  Besides, it wasn't as if she stood a chance against competition like Kagome, or even Kikyo, anyway._

_When did it become a competition?  What are you thinking?_

            Before she could answer herself, she felt a heavy hand fall on her shoulder.  She looked up with a start and found Inuyasha standing beside her.

"Let's return to camp," he said sternly.  "There are strange scents in the air tonight and we should stay close to the others."

            Sango was surprised at how sharply her heart sank when she realized that tthis was all he had to say to her.  She looked up at him wordlessly and nodded.  Then something strange happened.  He smiled at her.  Not his typical smirk, but a true honest smile.  His soft amber eyes seemed to glow with an inner warmth.  She smiled back for a long moment, then looked away as she felt her eyes go inexplicably misty.

"Let's go Sango," Inuyasha said, starting off towards the campfire.  Just before his hand slipped away from her, and without even realizing it, Inuyasha gave her shoulder the slightest squeeze.

Sango thought her heart was beating just a little faster than usual as she followed him back to camp.


	4. The River

            The attack had come at a predictably inopportune time.  Inuyasha had picked up the stink of the demon as soon as they reached the rope bridge, but kept it to himself so as not to panic the others.  The rotting old bridge seemed only half-likely to hold up in the first place and it was a dizzying plunge into the river below, so Inuyasha thought it better to simply herd his companions to the other side and hope the demon, some kind of bird by the scent of it, wouldn't find them interesting enough to concern itself with.  

They were halfway across and Inuyasha had begun to think that maybe, just maybe, they would make it to the other side without incident, when the demon hawk flew shrieking from the cliffs below.

            The first pass came with such speed and ferocity that not even Inuyasha's inhuman reflexes were off any use, and he found himself plucked from Kagome's side by the monster's wickedly hooked claws before he could so much as draw the Tetsusaiga.  Though deafened by the creature's screeching and the crazy beating of its six wings, Inuyasha nonetheless heard the chorus of shouts from his companions as the hawk lifted him high above them in a queasy arch, wheeling easily away from Kagome's hastily fired arrows.  His right arm was pinned to his side and, rather than risk losing the Tetsusaiga by attempting to draw it underhanded under such circumstances, Inuyasha raked his claws across the hawk's gut.  Steaming black blood rained from the demon's wounds, but it held him fast, snapping at him in rage.  Inuyasha raised his free arm to protect his face, cursing furiously as the meat of his forearm was ribboned by the demon's razor sharp beak. 

            Inuyasha's vision went red as blood sprayed into his eyes.

*****

Sango sensed the demon just in time to pull Kagome away from its initial pass, but the attack came so quickly that she didn't realize Inuyasha had been taken until Kagome had already notched an arrow and begun to take aim.  Although the demon hawk was misshapen and bulbous, it was surprisingly agile and seem to have little trouble evading every arrow that Kagome put into the air. 

The bridge quaked precariously beneath her as her companions scattered, and Sango nearly lost her footing and plummeted into the river far below.  This was no good.  Shouting at her not to worry about anything but getting to the other side, Sango shoved Kagome towards the opposite cliff.  Then she threw herself against the bridge's decaying rope handhold and beckoned Miroku and Shippo, who had been behind her when the fighting started, to do the same.  They hurriedly made their way past, Sango again coming within an inch of falling into the chasm below as they jostled her, and finally she had enough room to unsling the hiraikotsu from her back.

Forced to clumsily twirl the weapon above her head because of the handholds running down either side of the narrow bridge, Sango looked for the opportunity to make her attack.  The hawk shrieked high above her and thick drops of demon blood fell from the heavens like dirty rain.  Then her heart leapt in her throat as she heard Inuyasha's cry of pain.  The creature seemed to founder in the air, and Sango suddenly realized that the hawk was folded nearly in half trying to bite Inuyasha.  Capitalizing on the distraction, Sango loosed her weapon.   

The hiraikotsu howled murderously  as it streaked through the air towards its target.  At the last possible moment the demon hawk veered to one side, and Sango's weapon exploded past the beast, casting off a shower of filthy black feathers.  Its attention now diverted from the tattered form in its grasp, the beast swooped low over the bridge, lashing out with its talons.  With nowhere else to go, Sango threw herself against the flimsy planks of the bridge to avoid the demon's attack, but in doing so she failed to catch the hiraikotsu on its return flight.  The giant boomerang sheared through the bridge as it flew by, and Sango's stomach turned at the queasy sensation of the ground dissolving beneath her.  

            For a crazy instant she was sure that time had frozen, then she realized than her fall had been halted when Inuyasha caught her arm with his free hand.  His face was a grim mask of determination, and as the hawk again carried them into the midday sky he shouted only one word to her.

"Climb!"

            Nodding, Sango caught hold of the sleeve of his cloak with her free hand.  His grip was slippery with his own blood, and his left arm looked to have been ruined by the demon's assault,  so she was forced to pull herself up completely with her own strength.  Once she reached his chest it was simpler because she could use the hawk's own talons as handholds.  The bird seemed to be strangely ignoring them.  Sango supposed the creature was taking them back to its nest, either to finish them off at its leisure or as playthings for its young.  

Sango looked back only to see Miroku and Kagome astride Kirara far behind them.  Kirara galloped through the sky, leaving a trail of flame in her wake, but the hawk was far outpacing her.  Soon her companions had disappeared into the distance.  She looked to Inuyasha, but he looked only half coherent, dazed by pain as the hawk clutched him ever tighter, driving its claws further and further into his chest.  Despite his formidable regenerative abilities, Inuyasha was grievously wounded.  A human would have long since succumbed to such injuries.

Steeling herself, Sango unsheathed her katana and plunged it into the demon's breast.  The monster screamed in anger and pain, twisting in the sky and then diving into the canyon below.  Sango's blade wedged between two of the beast's ribs, and she clung to the weapon's hilt for dear life until the hawk leveled its course to avoid the rushing river now only a few meters beneath them.  Still hanging onto the hilt of her sword, Sango walked up Inuyasha's chest until she could wrap her legs around his shoulders.  Carefully, stretching precariously, she began to reach for the Tetsusaiga slung on his belt.

Her fingers just brushed against the weapon's hilt when her vision was filled with the demon hawk's shrieking visage.  The loathsome monster's jagged beak would have torn into her face if Inuyasha, mustering his quickly fading strength, hadn't caught hold of the beast's throat.  Without hesitation, Sango slipped a shuriken from her sleeve and deftly threw it into the hawk's right eye.

The creature bellowed its frustration and struggled free from Inuyasha's grip, leaving him with a handful of bloody feathers.  Abandoning her own sword, instead looping one arm around Inuyasha's neck for balance, Sango again went for the Tetsusaiga.  This time her hand wrapped firmly around the ancient sword's hilt.  The weapon was held fast in its scabbard, and Sango had to give it a solid tug before the blade suddenly freed itself.  

For a terrifying second she thought she might lose the weapon, but then Inuyasha's sure hand joined her own on the hilt.  In his grasp, the Tetsusaiga transformed from a poorly maintained old katana into its powerful true form.  Without a second's indecision, Inuyasha swung Tetsusaiga in a broad arch.  There was the sickening sound of metal grating across bone as the sword passed through the demon hawk in an explosion of blood.  The demon's wings flapped a few final beats as its head spiraled off behind them.  Then they plunged towards the river. 

Sango hit the water hard, her breath wresting itself painfully from her lungs.  Disoriented, she turned in a frantic circle looking for the surface before the darkness swelled up in her vision and finally claimed her.

*****

_She looks so small_, Inuyasha thought as he lay Sango's limp form flat on the bank.  _I never really thought of her as delicate…_

He shook the thought from his head.  Her lips were turning purple and he didn't have time to think about such stupid things right now.  Working hastily, he brushed her raven hair away from her face and tilted her head back.  Sucking in a deep breath, Inuyasha pinched her nose closed and pressed his mouth firmly down against hers, exhaling strongly.  He could feel her chest rise against his as he gave her another breath.  He breathed for her several times, but although she accepted his air she still did not breathe on her own.

            _Damn it, how much water did she swallow?_

           The first pangs of desperation hitting him, Inuyasha rocked his palm sharply under her ribs.  The third time he did this, water streamed from the corners of her mouth.  He turned her head on side to drain the fluid from her mouth, then turned her back to him and once again clamped his lips over hers.  Again her chest rose and fell against his as he exhaled into her mouth, but this time it rose again on its own.  Sango coughed up a gout of water, then gasped for air as her soft brown eyes finally sprang open.

            Still bewildered, she immediately tried to sit up.  Inuyasha put a hand on her shoulder, gently holding her down.

"Don't stand up just yet,"  he said.  

            Sango looked at him questioningly.  She tried to say something, but her voice was choked off as she sputtered out more water.

"You haven't been getting much air," Inuyasha explained.  "If you try to stand up right now, you'll just faint and we'll be back where we started."

She nodded and let her eyes drift shut, still drawing in heavy breaths.  

Inuyasha sat next to her for long time as her strength slowly began to return.  After a while he became aware that he was gently running his hand through her hair.  If she noticed, she didn't say anything.  Inuyasha surprised himself when he didn't stop.


	5. The Longest Night

            The words drifted like smoke into Inuyasha's mind as he slowly floated up into consciousness.  They were a soft coo dancing on an unusual rhythm, and under their sway he was teased and beckoned away from sleep.  At first they seemed too far away to understand, but as he began to awaken he found he could make sense of them.  

"Tasukete yo te yobeba…"

            Inuyasha furtively opened one eye.  Sango was hovering over him, changing his improvised  bandages.  And singing.  She spoke each syllable carefully, the words falling from her lips with the practiced precision of a song sung many times before.  He found himself watching her lips delicately form each word.

"Toki o koete, umi o koete, nami no…" she continued, wringing a bloody cloth out onto the ground.

            Her clothes had been soaked through with not only water but with stinking demon blood, and now she wore nothing but Inuyasha's cloak as her own clothing dried on the bank.  Inuyasha's keen nose picked up the faint scent of smoldering cotton, as if the hawk's blood had begun to burn through the discarded kimono.  He surmised that the bandages wrapped around his chest were likely from the few scraps of cloth that hadn't been ruined by the noxious ichor.  

All things considered, she was a vision.  Inuyasha felt a wave of guilt wash over him as he silently admired the supple sculpting of her legs and the graceful curvature of her hips.  Her dark brown hair spilled over her shoulders, framing the creamy skin of her throat and collar.  A tantalizing wedge of her flesh was visible each time she bent over him, his cloak spilling open to reveal much of her finely carved body.

Averting his eyes at last, he found that they were in a small cave.  The river was visible behind Sango through the mouth of the cave, and by the darkness he judged that it was already late evening.  A fire crackled nearby, so tiny that it provided light but little heat, and beside it lay the Tetsusaiga. 

"Sango?"  

            She seemed startled at the sound of his voice and immediately stopped singing.  She looked around for a moment as if floundering for something to say.

"I didn't know you could sing."  Inuyasha said, his voice so quiet that it sounded strange in his own ears.

"I can't."  Sango blushed, looking at the ground.

"Weren't you singing just now?"

            Sango cheeks seemed to glow with embarrassment.

"That's…that's just a song an old woman in the village used to sing when I was a child,"  she explained, nervously twisting the cloth in her hands.  "There are supposed to be more verses, but I don't remember them.  She was an islander from the south and most of the song was in another tongue…"

"It was nice."  Inuyasha said.  

            Sango's blush darkened a shade.  It darkened yet again when her eyes fell back to Inuyasha and she saw her hand resting on his bare chest.  Her fluster at its peak, she nearly lost her balance in her haste to pull her hand away.

"Do you remember why you were sleeping, Inuyasha?"  She asked, changing the subject.

            He thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"You were losing a lot of blood and finally passed out ."  She explained as memories of the fight with the demon hawk and its crushing talons surged back into his mind.  "You had me worried for a moment, but your wounds have already begun to close themselves."

 Inuyasha nodded, experimentally sitting up to test the wounds on his chest.  Already the injuries which the monster had dealt him were little more than deep scratches.  He arched his back, twisting from side to side.  At any moment he expected the flare of pain that came with a shattered rib piercing an organ, but it seemed as if everything was in place.  Finally satisfied, he pushed himself up against wall of the cavern and relaxed against it.

"Where are the others?" He said, finally asking the obvious question.

            Sango shook her head.  

"I didn't want to leave you here alone while I went to look for them."

            Inuyasha nodded, surveying the scene.  Though the smell of the river flooded his senses, it carried with it the scent of more demon hawks.  For him to be able to smell them over the overpowering scent of the river meant that there must be several of the creatures nearby.  

"There are more of those things out there."  He said at last.  "Are you up to fighting our way out?"

"I lost my sword when we went into the river." Sango replied, the implication obvious.

            Inuyasha's face turned sour.

"I have no intention of waiting here to be rescued," he began, his voice softening as Sango's eyes locked with his.  There was a long pause before he completed his sentence.  "But I suppose we should wait 'til morning before we try to get out of here."

*****

            Inuyasha hadn't spoken much since he grudgingly acceded to her request to remain in the cave overnight.  Sango shifted uncomfortably, well aware of Inuyasha's irritation at the arrangement.  At least three times she caught herself playing with her hair, swearing at herself for her childish behavior.  Finally her own fidgeting annoyed her to the point that she hugged her knees to her chest, deciding that if she couldn't relax she could at least make herself sit still.

            Before tonight she had rarely had occasion to touch Inuyasha's cloak, and she was surprised at how soft it was.  Not that she had given much thought to such things, but she had always assumed it would be coarse, more fitting with Inuyasha's personality.

_Not that he's as coarse as you thought he was either._

            She nodded in silent agreement with herself.  The cloak, naturally, smelled strongly on Inuyasha.  Sango had expected this, but what she didn't expect was the comfort she took from being surrounded by his warm, earthy scent.  She guiltily realized that she was vaguely jealous of Kagome for having been wrapped in this cloak so many times.

_And in his arms._

            She winced.  That thought sent a pang of longing through her, followed by an equally discomforting pang of all-too familiar guilt.  

_I've no right to have feelings for Inuyasha_, she thought bitterly to herself.

_You've every right to have feelings for whomever you wish_.

_But I _don't_ wish for these feelings. I just have them, she thought despairingly._

_Be that as it may, you have them and it is your right as a woman to do with them what you will._

"Sango, are you alright?"

            She jumped, startled to hear a voice that wasn't her own.  Inuyasha's warm-honey eyes were upon her, and she immediately felt herself blush under the caress of his gaze.

"I'm, I'm fine." She stammered, fixing her glance on the dwindling fire to avoid looking into his eyes.

            Her heart leapt in horror as her next words came without her approval.

"No, I'm not." She said in a low voice, her words escaping her lips even as she tried to halt them.

            Inuyasha cocked his head to one side, seemingly perplexed.        Frustration burned in her heart,  and with tears stinging her eyes she realized it was pointless to hold back any longer.  Rejection could never be more painful than not knowing.  She sat up on her knees, her fists clenched desperately, and fought with herself momentarily as she struggled to form the words that flooded her heart.  Inuyasha was sitting with his knees drawn up, and she put her nervous hands on them as she fumbled for words.  She could feel him tense beneath her touch, his eyes were wide with bewilderment.  He had raised his hands almost defensively.

            Sango shook her head in aggravation, abandoning speech and succumbing completely.  She pushed his knees apart, falling desperately between them, and hugged herself against him, her face buried in his lean, muscular chest.  Inuyasha uttered a small cry of surprise, and she was dimly aware of him flailing about for a place to put his hands.  Tears streaked down her face.

"Is it that bad, Inuyasha?"  Sango cried, her voice choked with sobs.

            After a long moment she felt his strong arms encircle her, and then he lay his head down against hers.

"It's not like that, Sango…" he said quietly.

            She realized that she was nestled against the very shoulder which had felt the bite of her sword when they first met so long ago.  She nuzzled her lips gingerly against the spot where the wound had once been.  Growing bolder as she released her pent-up emotions, she twined her arms around his neck, curling her fingers in his cold white hair.

"Sango…"  Inuyasha began, his voice trailing off.           

            She stared into his eyes for what seemed like a very long time, letting herself get lost in them.  She didn't realize she was going to kiss him until her lips were already fluttering against his.  His breath trembled softly.  Sango could feel herself shivering with anticipation as his arms tightened around her.  At last, finally succumbing to the long-neglected woman within her, she pressed lips firmly to his.  Her eyes drifted shut as she sighed quietly into his mouth.

            Surrendering her first kiss to Inuyasha was much easier and more natural than she had ever expected.  

She soon found that the same was true of her second kiss. 

And her third…


	6. Hopes and Fears

            There are few things that disrupt an animal's sense of smell more than running water.  This had become painfully obvious since the previous afternoon, as Kirara's ability to track Inuyasha and Sango was repeatedly and disastrously hampered by their close proximity to the river.  Although Miroku reasoned that the demon hawk could not possibly have carried them _too far in the time since they lost track of the creature, hour by hour fell away with no sign of them.  _

            Shortly before dark they had encountered the decapitated remains of the hawk, Sango's sword still lodged in its chest.  Kagome retrieved the weapon, and, having no other place to put it,  wrapped the blade in a blanket and slid it into her bedroll.  On his back Miroku carried Sango's hiraikotsu.  Though neither of them said so aloud, as the hours ticked by they both wondered if their friend would ever hold those weapons again.

            Real panic finally set in when it became to dark to continue searching.  While she had done her best to remain calm throughout the evening, Kagome didn't fare so well once she could no longer use the act of searching as a distraction from the reality of the situation.  

            Somewhere along the line during her journeys in the feudal era, Kagome had come to realize that it was entirely possible that one or more of her newfound comrades would be killed before everything was said and done.  She had told herself time and time again that she was prepared for such an eventuality, but faced with the immediate reality of the situation she found herself unable to maintain any such cool façade.  Kagome had spent the night in misery, alternating between fits of crying and periods of sheer mental exhaustion.

            Sango had become closer to her than any of her friends in modern times, perhaps because of the intimacy that came with sharing life or death situations with one another so regularly.  Inuyasha too had become a central figure in her life, perhaps achieving a greater importance even than her family back home.  To lose either of them was a miserable proposition.  To lose both in one day was more than she could bear.

Shippo tried to allay her fears, reminding her time and again how formidable their friends were, but by this point she was practically inconsolable.   Kagome had eventually managed to collect herself just enough to convince Shippo that she was feeling better just so he wouldn't have the added burden of worrying about her.  Eventually the tiny fox was satisfied enough to let her be.

Sometime in the middle of the night, after he thought the others were asleep, Miroku crept down to the riverbank and prayed for their companions.  Kagome lay motionless in her bedroll and watched him, fighting to resist the hollow feeling swelling up inside her and silently mouthing prayers of her own.  After nearly an hour the monk turned back towards camp, the moonlight falling upon him to reveal the tears glistening on his face.  Kagome buried her face in her pillow and sobbed. 

****

            Inuyasha didn't flinch as the fifth arrow plunged into his chest.  With supreme effort he forced himself to take another agonizing step, the arrows that peppered his legs burrowing further into him which every movement.  He snarled through clenched fangs, coldly glaring at his attacker.  Although they had been pierced more times than he could count, he raised his arms, straining to reach his enemy, aching to dig his claws into her soft flesh.

 She smiled coquettishly and raised her bow again.  Another arrow whistled through the air and Inuyasha staggered backwards as one of his amber eyes was shut forever.  Before he could recover, two more arrows buried themselves in his shoulders.  He found his balance and threw himself forward another desperate step, distantly hearing the groan of a bowstring being pulled back.  

The arrow was loosed, shrieking murderously as it cut the air, and ran itself hungrily through Inuyasha's throat.  He was scarcely aware of the pain, though at last he dropped to one knee.  

Much to his surprise, another arrow didn't follow.  He tried to rise, his muscles trembling with exertion but ultimately failing.  Inuyasha coughed, a gout of blood flying from his lips.  For the first time he became aware of the blood filling his lungs with each gurgling breath.  

A shadow fell over him.  She was standing over him now, another arrow notched and ready.  The final shot would be point blank.  On her face was a surreally cheerful smile. 

Inuyasha smiled back bitterly.

Lunging forward with the last of his strength, he drove his claws into her abdomen.  He never felt the arrow bury itself to the fletching in his shoulder.  All he felt was his hand sliding hotly through her gut, his claws slicing flesh and organs before breaking through into the sunlight.  The stink of her blood swelled up in his senses.  She didn't resist him but instead sank to her knees and wrapped her slender arms around his shoulders.  After a long moment he felt her heartbeat fall silent.

Exhausted, Inuyasha rested against the corpse as his demon body struggled to heal itself.  It was becoming harder and harder to breathe, and soon he realized that he was drowning in his own blood.  Regardless of his demon constitution, he needed help or his wounds would likely prove mortal.

With as much strength as he could muster, Inuyasha got his feet under himself and tried to stand, but suddenly the arms around his shoulders tightened.  Recoiling in surprise, he found himself on his back with the corpse on top of him.  Kagome's dead eyes glared down at him, her impossibly strong hands closing like a vice around his neck.

"I love you, Inuyasha," she gurgled, blood dribbling from the corners of her mouth.  

****

Inuyasha cried out in his sleep and Sango awakened with a jolt.  Concerned, she reached out and put a hand on his cheek.  He was clammy despite the cool morning air, but he seemed to calm a little at her touch.  Well aware that even two days ago she never would have had the courage to do so, Sango wrapped her arms around him and pulled him protectively against her.  

His body was still taut, as if he were trapped in a nightmare.  Sango tenderly combed her hands through his hair, relishing its coldness as it slipped silkily between her fingers.  Only after he relaxed in her arms did she kiss him, a light, lingering kiss that seemed all the sweeter because only she would ever know about it.

She turned that thought over her mind for a moment, then, smiling, she pressed her lips gingerly to his ear.

"I love you, Inuyasha," she whispered as quietly as she could, closing her eyes and wishing with all of her heart to dwell in that moment forever.


	7. Kagome

            The reunion was, as much as anything else, rather uneventful.  Shippo saw them first, as they came around a bend.  Sango was cradled in Inuyasha's arms, if only for so practical a reason  as that his cloak didn't quite hang down past her waist while she was standing.  Soon they were swarmed by their companions, with Kagome and Shippo rushing to hug them and Miroku carefully angling himself for the best possible view of the festivities.  Kirara and Shippo both leapt into Sango's arms with such surprising force that Inuyasha came within an inch of sprawling backwards and depositing both himself and his living cargo in the river.

            Sango was back on her own two feet soon enough, and Kagome scrambled to wrap a blanket around her before Miroku's predatory instincts took hold any more than they already had.  Their tiny group suddenly seemed like a throng of people, as Kagome and Miroku gave Sango a thorough once over and fawned embarrassingly over even the smallest scratches on her porcelain skin.  Then they whisked her up the bank, away from the chill of the river, and began shoving food at her as through she had been missing for a week.   

Although Inuyasha usually would have been irritated not to be the focus of attention under such circumstances (_He was the one who was nearly eviscerated by a demon hawk, after all), in this particular instance he was quite content to be left alone on the rocky shore.  He watched them for a while as they chatted and laughed, seemingly ecstatic to see Sango after what was hardly more than a few hours of separation.  _

_It'd be useless to try and get them moving again today,_ he thought to himself, though they had been going nowhere in particular to begin with.

            His heart was heavy in his chest as he saw Kagome clinging to Sango in such an overwrought way.  Even from the shore Inuyasha could see the slight grimace on Sango's face each and every time Kagome hugged her or offered her even a tidbit of food.  He didn't consider his conscience to be his strongest attribute, but it seemed to have gained considerable clout since he woke up this morning in Sango's embrace.  If _his_ conscience was bothering him, he could only imagine how Sango, in many ways a much better person than himself, felt as Kagome practically fell all over herself to wait on her.   

Inuyasha stood on the bank for what seemed like a very long time.  After he had his fill of the uncomfortable situation, he huffed a sigh and slipped quietly away.

*****

            There were no trees of any meaningful size along the stony riverbank, so Inuyasha found himself perched on a small protrusion of rock, which only the most ambitious witness could describe as a precipice, that jutted from cliff face.  His left shoulder had been throbbing sharply all day, and some primitive part of him had vaguely hoped that he could somehow escape the pain by putting a few meters between himself and the ground.  While he typically climbed trees to get a feel for the landscape, the view from his rocky perch was limited to the river itself and the cliff on the far bank.  Even though sunset was fast approaching, the landscape was nothing but grey.  Had he bothered to look up, he would have seen the top third of the cliff ablaze with warm light from the sinking sun, but such a thing never occurred to him.

_Shouldn't have kissed her, moron._

            This situation had certainly deteriorated.  He had dismissed his thoughts about Sango as a passing fancy, content in the knowledge that he himself would never bring the matter to light.  He had not banked on Sango taking the initiative, nor had he considered what course of action he might take if she did.  Now things were worse than he had ever thought they could get.

"Stupid woman," he grumbled through clenched teeth.  "Why'd she have to go and do something so dumb?"

            Even as he said it, he was painfully aware that not even _he believed his own rebuke.  He rapped himself across the forehead with the butt of his palm._

            The chilly evening air danced across his bare chest, and he glumly mulled over the idea of taking a dip in the river.  Though he had mainly been hiding out all day so he wouldn't have to face Kagome, there was also the little matter of Shippo.  As a fox demon, Shippo's sense of smell was only slightly less developed than his own.  While Shippo might have dismissed his scent on Sango because she was wearing his cloak, the scent of the woman all over him would have been suspicious even to the naïve youngster.  Inuyasha was practically covered in Sango's elusive, sweet scent.  Shippo was such a precocious little turd that Inuyasha didn't think "I was just carrying her" would put the matter to rest.  

            Each breath filled his senses with nothing but Sango.  He had known her scent before, of course, but only well enough to recognize it.  Until the previous night he'd never paid any real attention to it.  She smelled of warm spices floating on a cool summer breeze, almost like expensive incense; a natural, soft scent that was, to say the least pleasant.

            Inuyasha shook the thoughts of Sango momentarily out of his mind.  However pleasant her smell was, what had to be done had to be done.  Inuyasha was steeling himself to plunge into the frigid rushing water below when Kagome's voice rang out.

"So there you are," she called from the ground beneath his perch.  He had been too distracted to even notice her scent as she approached.  "Why'd you run off like that?  We were worried about you too, you know."

            Inuyasha ventured a look at her, hoping his discomfort wasn't half as apparent as he thought it was.  Since there first meeting, there had only been a handful of times when he _wasn't happy to see Kagome.  The others had all been because of Kikyo._

"Yeah, well, as you can see I'm perfectly fine," he called down to her.  "As always," he added acerbically, almost as an afterthought.

"Will you at least come down here and talk to me face to face?" Kagome shouted up at him, struggling to be heard over the noise of the river.  "I mean, twelve hours ago I thought you were dead.  Is it too much to ask just to _see_ you?"

"Can't you see me well enough from down there?" he shot back, not entirely sure what he meant by that.

            Before the words were completely free of his lips, the prayer beads around Inuyasha's neck lit up with their familiar glow and the subduing spell attached to them drug him roughly from his perched and to the ground at Kagome's feet.  Although the river had drowned out her cry of "sit", once on the bank Inuyasha could it hear it echoing along the cliffs .

"Alright," she cried angrily. "I don't have a clue what's gotten into you but can't you cut out the jerk routine for even a few minutes?"

            The strength of the subduing spell was such that it was all he could do to raise his head, much less reply.

"I came looking for you to say I'm glad you're alright and here you are acting like you're too good to talk to me all of a sudden!"  She was shouting at him now, though her tone made the sentence a question.  "Just when I think that maybe_, just maybe_ you're even halfway decent, you always find a way to prove me wrong."

_You don't know the half of it,_ he thought ruefully.  Though his strength had returned, he didn't even bother standing up because he probably deserved this.

"Don't you even have anything to say to me?"  

            Inuyasha couldn't be sure from his bird's eye view of the dirt, but it sounded like she was crying now.  That certainly didn't light any fire under him to defend himself.

"I almost forgot, here's your cloak back you jerk!"  There was extra emphasis on the last word followed by stomping footsteps he would have sworn came from an oni. 

             Something warm, and smelling vaguely of Sango was hurled at his head.  He lay in the dirt for a long time, not in any particular hurry to get back to camp.


	8. Miroku

            If any of his companions wondered why Inuyasha came back to came soaking wet and in a foul mood, none of them dared to ask.  That Kagome met him with a glare that could freeze over a hot spring was not lost on Sango, who had been sitting by the campfire making uncomfortable conversation with Miroku for the last two hours.  She wondered what had happened between them when Kagome had gone to return his cloak.  Nothing good, from the look of things.

            She had tried to return the cloak herself, if only to get a few more moments alone with Inuyasha, but Kagome had insisted that she should rest.  It was almost embarrassing that her companions thought that her little adventure had been so harrowing.  It didn't help things in the least that Kagome was the one falling all over herself to make her comfortable.  Sango almost envied Inuyasha for finding the opportunity to slip away.

            Although she had done her best to maintain a normal level of conversation with her companions, Sango had actually spent most of the day trying to decide how she should ultimately deal with Kagome.  It had been easy enough to put her friend out of her mind back in the cave, but when they were face to face Sango felt as guilty as if she'd been caught stealing.

_Not too far from it, but you haven't been caught yet._

            That was a wonderful thought.  She and Kagome had never really had an argument about _anything_, much less something as monumental as Inuyasha.  Moreover, she'd seen Kagome's temper shine through enough times to get a taste of things to come.  When, and it seemed to Sango to be a question of _when_ rather than _if_, the situation between herself and Inuyasha came to light there would be a nigh cataclysmic confrontation.  Sango sighed and traced a small circle on the ground with her foot.  

            From the very first time Inuyasha put his hand on her shoulder, Sango had worked hard to convince herself that there was really nothing between him and Kagome.  She had not succeeded.  If anything she had become more acutely aware of how much Kagome cared about him.  Everything from the way they bickered back and forth to the way Kagome had been able to put so many arrows into the air so quickly when he had been carried off by the hawk had only reinforced what Sango already knew.  Whether or not she knew it herself, Kagome was in love with him….

"Don't you think?" Miroku said, snapping her back to reality.

            Sango looked around stupidly for a second, fumbling for an answer because she hadn't been paying attention to a word the monk said.  Luckily Shippo registered his opinion in her stead.

"Miroku's right, Kagome," the fox began. "Resurrecting a dragon's corpse to fight for you is wrong.  It could draw the soul back out of the afterlife!  How would _you_ feel about that?"

            Completely lost now, Sango drew her legs to her chest and tried to become as small as possible.  She wasn't sure she even wanted to know what they were talking about.

"They didn't resurrect the corpse," Kagome protested.  "The machine dragon just uses the bones as an endoskeleton and the interspinal fluid as the basis for the computer system."

"I don't have a clue what you just said, but I ain't got no use for dragons, 'machine' or otherwise."  Inuyasha snarled crossly.  Those were the first words he'd spoken since he returned to camp.

"Who cares what you think?" Kagome shot back, her voice full of venom.  That was all it took for Sango to decide it was time to leave.  

            She made a bit of a production out of yawning extravagantly and stretching her back just to get her point across, then set Kirara on the ground and announced that she was going to bed.  Miroku's eyes lit up at the prospect and he came close to stumbling into the campfire in his haste to escort her the five feet between the group and her bedroll.

            Sango gave Inuyasha a quick look that asked _what should I do?_

            _Hell if I know,_ his eyes responded.  

            In the end she acquiesced to his company.   Even after she lay down, he lingered far longer than she had hoped he would.  It wasn't that she didn't like him, or even that his flirtatious attentions weren't just a little bit cute, but enough was enough and too much was too much.  

"Sango, I want you to know how happy I am that you survived your ordeal unscathed."

            She nodded at him pleasantly, her body language guarded.  At this point he hadn't actually _done_ anything yet, but that would come in time.  It always did.

"Kagome and I were worried to no end about you and prayed for your safe return," continued the monk.  His face was stoic and his eyes shut, the very image of a thoughtful Buddha.

            Sango felt herself relax, which in and of itself was a mistake.  Like a coiled viper, Miroku sprang into action as soon as she let her guard down.

"Thank you for returning to us, Sango," he said, his voice perfectly even, while he set his hand on her breast as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

            A fury she knew all too well boiled up within her, and her hand shot out from under her blanket almost reflexively.  She had slapped him many times in the past, but for the most part they had been playful.  This time was different, and the sound seemed to echo like a rebuke through the canyon long after the blow had been dealt.  Miroku's eyes were wide with surprise, and even in the poor light she could see the bruise darkening quickly on his cheek.  Her own hand throbbed from the force of  the assault and it was that realization that softened her face.

"Miroku, I didn't mean…"

            The monk stood up and shook his head.  Behind him she could see that Inuyasha was on his feet, his eyes blazing.  Miroku touched his face as if in shock.  His hand was shaking.  Sango was still looking for something to say when he silently turned and walked away.

*****

            The eastern sky was already turning purple with the coming dawn when Sango awoke to see Inuyasha looking down at her.  He was sitting on his knees, leaning over her with his hair spilling around her face.  She smiled up at him. 

_He must have been watching me sleep._

"I just wanted to say goodnight." Inuyasha whispered.

"It's almost morning," she replied.  "Have you been standing watch all this time?"

            He nodded silently.  Sango thought it was more likely that he simply couldn't sleep.  Her own slumber had come reluctantly and even then had been fitful and restless.

"Goodnight, Inuyasha," she said quietly.

"Goodnight." 

            Before he could pull away, Sango reached up and gently pulled him to her.  They exchanged a furtive kiss, each one giving the other a shy smile afterwards.  Then he tenderly trailed a clawed finger along her cheek and departed.  Sango rolled over and closed her eyes.  Much to her surprise, she slept soundly for the rest of the night.

             Kagome, who silently witnessed the whole exchange, did not.


	9. Home Again

            "This brings us to Dr. Shibutani, whose chapter in the book I'm _sure_ all of you read before you came to class today," Professor Takayama began, pausing briefly for a sip of coffee.  "So who can tell exactly what Dr. Shibutani brings to the table that's so important to our discussion?"

After the briefest moment of thought, Kagome raised her hand.

"Yes, Miss. Higurashi?"

"Shibutani said that we can assume the role of several generalized others."

The professor gave her a guarded a smile.         

"That's correct, but how does that differ from the other sociologists we've been discussing?"

Kagome paused for a few seconds to consider her answer.

"Dr. Shibutani rejects the idea of just one generalized 'other' because people are influenced by multiple reference groups.  Each reference group has its own generalized 'other' that its participants draw upon, which adds more layers to the symbolic interactionist approach to the study of role-taking."

Professor Takayama nodded, his head bobbing on his pencil thin neck like a dashboard ornament.

"Very good, Kagome.  Those aren't exactly the terms that I would have used, but that's a good summary," the elderly professor said in as pleased a tone of voice as he ever used.  "We'll be discussing more of Dr. Shibutani's work later, but first I'd like to at least touch on the chapter on gender identities before the weekend…"

Kagome huffed a relieved sigh after the professor's attention was diverted back to the class as a whole.  _The Integration of Self and Society_ was a college level course, and it was always nerve wracking to be the center of attention even if she did know the answer.  Still, it seemed like she knew almost all of the answers lately.  Her soaring grades in the month since she returned from the feudal era made the whole thing seem almost worth it.  

"Does anyone know the name of the American sociologist who's been doing work on the violent image of masculinity as presented in the media?  If it helps, he's the gentleman who coined the term 'tough guise'."

Kagome barely even realized she'd raised her hand until Professor Takayama called on her again.

"Jackson Katz?" she said, a little unsure of her answer.

"Yes, he's the one!  We'll actually be watching one of his films later in the course."

For some reason Professor Takayama seemed a little too excited about that.  Kagome glanced at her watch, pleasantly surprised that the final bell was only moments away.  As she discreetly reached down to retrieve her book bag, the fragment of the Shikon Jewel which hung from her neck spilled out of her collar and dangled lazily in the air.

****

            "How long?"

Sango blinked, her eyes registering both confusion and the smallest hint of fear.

"How long has it been going on?"  Kagome demanded, fighting the urge to raise her voice.

            "What are you talking about?"  Sango replied in her most quizzical voice.  She was still kneeling on the ground and bundling up her bedroll, but her motions had become stiff and unnatural.

"You and Inuyasha,"  Kagome nearly spat.  Her voice broke just enough to infuriate her.  "How long has it been going on?"

Sango abandoned her task and looked up at Kagome.  Her mouth was a thin line and she was blinking too much.  Kagome's hand itched to slap her, but instead she closed her eyes and spoke as carefully and as clearly as she could.

"I saw the two of you kiss last night.  How long have you and Inuyasha been…"

She didn't know how she wanted to finish that sentence.

"I'm sorry, Kagome," Sango said at last, her voice tiny and pensive, "I…"

"I don't care if you're sorry, I just want to know how long you two have been keeping this from me!"  Kagome shouted, tears welling up hotly in her eyes.

            Sango avoided her gaze, her hands fisted in her lap.  Kagome was angry at herself for losing control, but at the same time she was calling herself an idiot for thinking she could keep control in the first place.  Somewhere in the distance a bird was singing, blissfully oblivious to the confrontation.  The men, and Shippo, were likewise unaware of what was going on, as they had set our earlier in hopes of finding a nearby way out of the canyon.  One of them, however, would be getting what was coming to him soon enough.

            "It wasn't his fault Kagome," Sango finally began in a low, trembling voice.  "Please don't take this out on Inuyasha.  It was all my fault, not his."

            Kagome clenched his fists tightly, pain flaring in her palms as her nails dug into her hands.

            "How hard is it to give me a simple answer?" she growled, wanting to scream at Sango with every fiber of her being.

            Sango bit her lip.

            "Not long," she said quietly.  "Just a few days ago, really…"

****

            The walk home from school seemed to take forever these days.  Rather than take the straight route, Kagome now followed a circular course that allowed to her avoid walking past the Sacred Tree.  It seemed silly, but seeing the tree was like seeing Inuyasha and catching sight of it did nothing but upset her.  Lots of things seemed to upset her lately.  At least she wasn't crying herself to sleep at night anymore.

            Kagome shook her head, irritated with herself for dwelling on her problems.  Thinking about it didn't accomplish anything except making herself made, so there really wasn't any point to lingering on things she couldn't change.

_Yeah, keeping telling yourself that.__  It certainly made a difference the last twenty times. _

Summer was approaching, and the sun pounded off the pavement as Kagome made her way down the street.  The sky above was a crystalline blue, and she might have been enjoying the day if she had felt even remotely cheerful.  She had spent the last few months quite literally living in the past, but now that she was back in her own time for good she was _still _living in the past, if only in her mind.  Her friends, who were initially delighted to learn that she would be regularly attending school again, had soon noticed the perpetual gloom that hung about her.  Their attempts to right the situation had met with no success, in no small part because Kagome was completely reticent about discussing what was bothering her.  Even a few dates with Hojo had done nothing to make her feel at all better.

She frowned as she thought of Hojo.  That poor boy had done everything in his power just to get her to smile for the past month, but she had been making a point to avoid him.  He was a sweet guy, practically everything Inuyasha wasn't, but being around him only made her think that selfish dog back in the feudal era.  She didn't want to hurt Hojo's feelings, but he wasn't the one she wanted to be on dates with it.

That thought threatened shatter the dams that had been straining to hold back her tears, and Kagome broke into a run so she would at least be home when she broke down.

****

            "I'm sorry, Kagome.  I really am. It's just…"

            "Shut up, Inuyasha,"  Kagome said through her tears.  Confronting Sango had been hard enough, but dealing with Inuyasha was even worse.

            Inuyasha recoiled a few steps as if he had been struck by her words.  For a few moments the evening air around the Bone Eater's Well was deathly silent.  His amber eyes glowed softly in the fading light, and he paced back and forth nervously, not knowing what to do or say.

            "Just tell me why," Kagome said, her trembling as she struggled to hold back a sob.

            "I don't know, Kagome.  I don't,"  Inuyasha said, trying to look her in the eyes but ultimately letting his gaze drop to the ground.

            "You know," she began, her voice finally choking up.  "It wasn't so bad when it was Kikyo.  I mean, you loved Kikyo from the start.  But Sango?  If you couldn't love me because of Kikyo, why can you love Sango?"

            "I do love you, Kagome…"  Inuyasha said, shaking his head in self disgust.

            "Don't you ever say that to me again, Inuyasha!"

            Inuyasha retreated a step, his eyes wide with surprise as Kagome loosed her venom.  Kagome's hands were clenched in fists and tears streamed down her cheeks, glistening in the last rays of sunset as they dropped onto the grass.  Deep in her heart she had wanted to hear those words from Inuyasha ever since the day he protected her from Sesshomaru at his father's tomb, but now they did nothing but hurt.  Hearing him say that he loved only hammered home his betrayal even more.

            "Don't you _dare_ tell me you love me ever again,"  Kagome repeated, her voice a stream of cool poison.

            Inuyasha moved forward as if to embrace her, but she pushed him away and turned her back to him.  Kagome hugged herself, trying to stop her shoulders from shaking as the last ounce of her composure broke down and the tears overcame her completely.  She half expected him to try to put his arms around her, but instead she only heard a dull thud as sat down ungracefully on ground.

            Neither one of them said a word for a long time, and the sun had finally disappeared behind the horizon when Kagome finally spoke.

            "I'm going home."

            "What?  You can't…" Inuyasha began to protest.

            She turned to him with fire in her eyes.

            "It's obvious that I don't have any real place here,"  she said, fresh tears welling up.  "I don't want to have to worry about confusing you anymore or somehow getting between you and Sango or you and Kikyo or whoever else you have your eye on."

            Kagome was at the edge of the well before Inuyasha could so much as get to his feet.    She felt her the sorrow swell within her yet again as he walked towards her with pleading eyes. 

            "Kagome, don't…"

            She shook her head furiously as she began to gingerly lower herself into the well.  Against her better judgment she cast one final glance over her shoulder as she dropped herself into the oblivion beneath her.  The last thing she felt before emerged in her own time was the sting of tears.


	10. Drift

            On the night that Kagome left, Inuyasha never returned to the others.  He stood staring into the Bone Eater's Well for what seemed like hours, trying to will himself into diving into the blackness and bringing her back.  In the end, as the dewy grass surrounding him shone like a false dawn in the moonlight, he realized that he didn't know _why_ he wanted to bring her back.  Though he had once found it possible before to divide his heart between two women, he could not bring himself to divide it between three.  Love divided two ways was suspect, love divided three ways was simply false.  

            He reached a fateful decision then, to abandon the group of companions which his carelessness had so undermined.  He could think of a thousand reasons to let them go on their own, and only one reason, Sango, to stay with them.  And Sango, he decided, would be better off without a faithless lover to break her heart.

            The wound Kikyo dealt him so long ago burning freshly in his chest, Inuyasha leapt into a tree and made his way off through the forest canopy.  His path unthinkingly took him past the small clearing where his erstwhile companions had pitched camp, and as he passed by his unnaturally keen hearing was flooded with a swirl of stinging words and bitter epithets as Miroku and Shippo lay into Sango.  He stopped for a long moment, weighing the consequences of intervention, but eventually he moved on, thinking that maybe - just maybe - he had been right about himself this whole time.

*****

            The warm night air caressed the last traces of tears from her cheeks as Sango sat in the dewy grass.  Somewhere nearby an owl cried,  and the surrounding  woods were alive with sounds of night creatures.  Kirara whimpered and nuzzled her hand.  None of it mattered.  Everything was numb.  Sango was vaguely aware that she was twisting a few strands of hair around one of her fingers, a habit she had despised since childhood, but she couldn't generate enough concern to make herself stop.

            The entire day had been a nightmare.  After Kagome left her for her own time, Sango had taken it upon herself to finally explain to Shippo and Miroku what exactly had happened.  While she hadn't expected anything close to a positive reaction, the lambasting she got nonetheless caught her off guard.

"I'd expect something that dumb from Inuyasha, but not you," Shippo had screamed at her, red-faced and crying.   

            Miroku had said little, but in their own way his actions were even worse than Shippo's verbal assault.  He simply gathered his things and walked off into the woods.  Just before the darkness enveloped he turned and spoke in the most measured tone she had ever heard from him.

"Come Shippo," he had said.  "I think it's time we took our leave."

            A few moments later she was completely alone for the first time since her family had been killed.  Though they might have allowed her to follow, she knew well enough that she was no longer welcome among them.  For the first time she thought of how she had shattered the sanctity of Shippo's surrogate family, and the wave of guilt that swept over her for destroying the child demon's little world drowned out even her remorse for Kagome's suffering.  She had wounded even the monk, whose boundless lechery had long ago led her to believe that he would be quite detached from such matters.

            It was that thought that hung in her mind.  For if Miroku's lust was so unremitting, what right had he to even _dare_ to be offended by her liaisons with Inuyasha?  The more she turned that over in her mind, the more she was able to turn it into a source of anger.  It was by stoking this inner fury at the monk's casual hypocrisy that she was able to force away from wallowing in her sadness and to look ahead to the days she would spend at Inuyasha's side.

           It was a few hours later that she realized Inuyasha would not be coming back either.  Then the tears had begun anew, for she had just seen her companions disappear into the night in exchange for…nothing at all.  She had wagered her heart against the half-demon's and what come back empty-handed.  It was that realization that hurt her so deeply, that she had gambled all of her companions for the sake of her feelings for Inuyasha, and the reward for her sacrifice and faith in her heart was abandonment.  

            Sometime just before the first light of morning began to shine through the trees, Sango gathered up her belongings and prepared to journey on.  There were two paths leading out of the clearing, excluding the one by which they had arrived, one to the east and one to the north.  Miroku and Shippo had traveled north.  After a moment's indecision, Sango bit her lip and set off along the eastern path.

*****

            Inuyasha perched in a tree, letting his mind wander as he stared into the iridescent surface of a small lake not more than a few yards away.  A handful of children, human children, were splashing and cavorting in the shallow water near the shore.  They were innocently unaware that he was watching them as they laughed and played together.  Inuyasha frowned.  Their scents, though masked by the strong smell of the lake, were boisterous and dusty, and they clung annoyingly to his senses.

            Several days had passed since he left his companions, and Inuyasha had done little but wander through the forest.  On a few occasions he had caught their scents, and it appeared to him that the group had disbanded almost entirely, as Sango's sweet scent was never intermingled with the earthier smells of the others.  He wasn't quite sure how he felt about all this, and more than once he had barely stopped himself from tracking Sango's scent to the source and rejoining her.  At one point he had even briefly entertained the thought of finding Miroku and Shippo before shaking the idea from his mind.

            He had barely allowed himself to think of Kagome, though she often made her way into his mind unbidden.  Whatever the case, he was not about to allow himself to wallow in self pity and weakness over a stupid human girl.

_Which one?_

            Inuyasha bit his lip and angrily forced that thought from his mind before it could plant its seed.  After all these years he had no intention of developing a conscience, and wasting his time thinking about it was asinine anyway.  

_She was always complaining about not spending enough time in her era anyway,_ he thought bitterly.  _Who needs all those humans around?  I mean, what was the point of having so many people weaker than me hanging around slowing me down?  When did I agree to be a nanny for all the weaklings?  And while the hell does the air smell like cucumbers…?_

Even above the smell of the water, the stink of dead fish and rotten cucumbers caught his attention.  After he became aware of it, it only took him an instant to process its meaning, but by that time one of the children below, a little girl,  had already been dragged underwater.  The remaining children scattered, screaming in terror, as a thick red cloud began to spread through the water like ink spilt on a parchment.

"Damn it all," Inuyasha growled to himself as he leapt from his perch, his superhuman agility allowing to propel himself well into the lake's shallows.  "I'm really getting sick of all this babysitting."

            As he dashed out into the deeper water, Inuyasha overheard one of the fleeing children cry out something about fetching the woman from the village.  In the back of his mind he wondered if perhaps the little brat  meant Sango, but he pushed the thought away as a small hand frantically broke the surface only an arm's length away from him.  He sprang forward, seizing the frail wrist and pulling the struggling child into his arms.  The little girl flailed against him for a moment as he retreated towards the shore, but her strength waned quickly and she was unconscious long before he set her down on the beach.  

            The girl couldn't have been more than seven or eight.  Inuyasha couldn't help but think that she might have one day been a beautiful woman as he stared down at her waxen features.  He hair clung to her face in matted tangles, and on the right side of her slender abdomen was the telltale bite of a kappa.  Even as he heard something splashing through the water behind him, Inuyasha knelt beside the child and gently slipped a finger into her wound.  It was with some small relief that his tender probing found her liver still intact, but Inuyasha knew well enough that such a wound would almost certainly prove mortal.

"Why have you stolen my feast from me?"  From behind Inuyasha gurgled a voice that sounded like water sloshing through seaweed.  Inuyasha stood and slowly turned around.

            The kappa was large for his kind, almost as tall as Inuyasha.  At first glance its frame appeared almost deathly gaunt, but further consideration showed the creature to be lean with muscle.  On its back was a flattened turtle's shell, its interlocking plates uneven and bladelike.  Filthy claws hooked from its webbed fingers and toes, and its froglike mouth, held agape, was jagged with needle-sharp teeth.  It stared hatefully at Inuyasha with its pinpoint red eyes, its protruding brow furrowed with rage.   The plane of its skull was unnaturally flat, for on the top of its head, like all other kappas, it had a small circular dent which constantly held a small quantity of water from the lake.  It was from this water that the demon drew its strength.

"You had no right to rob me of my meal, half-breed," it hissed, advancing a few steps closer.

"Look, frogboy, today is the wrong day to start trouble with me,"  Inuyasha snarled, the flames of anger within him rapidly flaring higher and higher.

"This lake is my home, half-breed.  It is my right to hunt within its waters as I please."

            Inuyasha chuckled coldly.

"If you're gonna call it hunting, at least hunt something your own size," Inuyasha spat in his most derisive tone. 

            The kappa, now less than a meter away, gave him a bemused look.

"Like you, I suppose," gurgled the kappa.

"That's exactly what I had in mind," Inuyasha snarled, a lopsided smile cutting across his face and revealing his fangs.  

            Then something strange happened.  The little girl let out a trembling gasp, and Inuyasha glanced back at her for the briefest of instants.  Before he could turn his attention back to the kappa, the creature seized him by his cloak and hurled him to the ground.  Inuyasha landed badly, awkwardly twisting his head to one side to avoid the skull-splitting impact and nearly breaking his neck in the process.  The water demon smiled cruelly and beckoned him to stand again.  Inuyasha slowly rose to his feet, brushing himself off.

"I almost forgot," Inuyasha grumbled in exasperation.  "All kappas are masters of wrestling."

            The kappa smiled at him with a crooked grin.

"I'm afraid that such talent is mine and mine alone, half-breed."

"Then I guess its an honor to face the one kappa in the world who's more skilled than me,"  Inuyasha said in the most ingratiating tone he could muster, politely bowing his head to the creature.

            The kappa's eyes lit up at Inuyasha's glowing praise, and it bowed in return.  As it did so, the water it kept in the small dent on the top of its head, its link to the lake and therefore its power, spilled ignobly onto the ground.  The creature's expression changed from smugness to horror as it realized that it had fallen for so pedestrian a deception, and it tried to throw itself past Inuyasha in a frantic dive for the water as its muscles began to rapidly wither away.  With neither hesitation nor spectacle, Inuyasha unsheathed the Tetsusaiga and cut his foe down as it surged past him.

"One thing I didn't forget is that kappas are stupid," he quipped as he sheathed his sword.

            As he began to turn his attention back to the wounded child, he heard the little girl's companions stampeding down the path back towards the lake.  He stooped down to bind her wounds, paying little heed to the children's screaming.

"Hang on, Yuri!" Came one cry.

"She's coming!" Answered another.

            Inuyasha shook his head, irritated that "help" had arrived so late.  The kid didn't look like she was going to last until sunset, much less make it through the night.  It didn't matter, though.  Now that help was on the way, he would disappear into the forest and let the villagers take care of her.  It was only as he turned to leave that a familiar scent hit his nose.  It wasn't the one he had been expecting.  As if to confirm his suspicions, another joyous cry came from the fast approaching herd of children.

"It's gonna be okay, Yuri!  Lady Kikyo comes!"

            With no further hesitation, Inuyasha sprang back to his earlier perch just as the children came bursting off the path and onto the shore.  There was a moment's confusion as they found the kappa slain and their friend safely on the shore, though Inuyasha couldn't make out any single voice above the den.  Then she was there.

            Kikyo seemed to glide into his field of view as if floating on some invisible current.  Her raven hair shone like polished onyx in the afternoon sun, and her robes were almost impossibly resplendent.  A lump formed in Inuyasha's throat as the longings of so many years ago flooded back into his memory.  With the grace of a walking dream she set her bow and herb basket next to the bleeding girl and began to examine her wounds.  Watching her as she knelt down over the dying child, Inuyasha could almost see her as she had once been, as kind and as gentle as a mother's kiss.

            Inuyasha found himself transfixed on her, and he watched motionlessly as she tended to the child.  He couldn't remember how many times he had done this in the past, watching in amazement as Kikyo healed the sick and nursed the wounds of the injured.  For a moment, he nearly allowed himself to forget just what she had become.

            Then it happened.  The little girl gave a shuddering breath and went limp in Kikyo's arms as she cradled the child to her chest.

"I'm sorry children," Kikyo said in a voice that flowed like masterful calligraphy. "Yuri has passed over."

            Kikyo bowed her head over the little girl as her playmates burst into tears.  Even Inuyasha felt his heart sink a little at her words.  Shaking her head in resignation, Kikyo lay the child gently down and turned to her friends.

"Children, go quickly to the village and bring back Yuri's parents.  I shall remain here and pray for her soul to reach the afterworld."

            The children did as they were told, and within seconds Kikyo was alone with the dead girl's body.  Inuyasha was about to sneak off himself when he felt the tiny ripple of energy as the girl's soul disconnected from her remains.  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as Kikyo gingerly reached out to cradle the disembodied soul before absorbing it into her own being.  Inuyasha grimaced in disgust.  His warm memories of her suddenly seemed impossibly faraway, and Inuyasha, having seen more than his fill, rose to leave.

            The arrow found its mark in exactly the same place as its predecessor had all those years ago.  A current of spiritual energy coursed through him as Kikyo's magic surged within the wound.  Inuyasha staggered, then fell from the tree.  Still sitting on her knees beside the corpse, Kikyo sighed softly and watched him through narrowed eyes as he tried to stand.

"You'd watch me all this time and then leave without so much as a greeting, Inuyasha?"  


	11. Kikyo

            Mustering what strength he had left, Inuyasha managed to rise to his knees before losing his balance and sitting back gracelessly against the tree.  His head was swimming, and his muscles felt weak and twitchy.  The pain in his chest was intense, shooting out through the rest of his body likes arcs of lightning from the arrowhead lodged deep within him.  His left arm hung limply even as he strained to raise it.  The arrow itself wasn't the root of the problem, for it was Kikyo's formidable spiritual power, channeled through the weapon, that dealt him the most severe harm and rendered his mongrel body so useless.

"Hello, Inuyasha," Kikyo said as she stood over him, her voice as smooth and mild as if she were conversing with him over a meal.

            Inuyasha ignored her, struggling to control his own shaking right arm enough to grasp the arrow that pierced him.  He sucked in a sharp breath as his hand closed around the shaft.  There was the faint sizzle of charring flesh as the arrow's magic burnt into his palm.  He grit his teeth as he strained to pull the arrow out, but was forced to give up after a moment's struggle when the flaring pain became overpowering.

            Kikyo smiled her soft, knowing smile, kneeling before Inuyasha and examining the wound.  Her slender fingers trailed up the arrow's shaft until it disappeared into his chest.  Her hands were still red with the blood of the murdered child, and the blood trailed off her fingertips in macabre trails wherever she touched him. Gingerly, with trained precision, she pulled the torn bits of his cloak from the wound.  

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"  Inuyasha's voice worked whether or not anything else did, and he practically spat in fury as he barked at her.

"It missed your heart this time,"  she said matter-of-factly.  She looked him in the eyes as she found a grip on the shaft of the arrow.  "Because the angle was different, I suspect."

            Inuyasha glared at her defiantly.

"Thanks so much for your concern," he growled, feebly trying to bat her hand away.  "Now get the hell away from me."

            Kikyo's face darkened, and she twisted her wrist ever so slightly.  Inuyasha cursed her as the razor sharp arrowhead rotated within him, slicing and snagging flesh.  He writhed, trying in vain to pull away from her.

"Be still, Inuyasha" she scolded him.  "I shall remove the arrow."

            Before Inuyasha could protest further she set one knee on his lap, pressing her chest against his.  She lingered in their mock embrace for a moment then threw her weight back sharply, wrenching the arrow out of him.  Having been turned inside of him, the arrowhead tore a gout of flesh out with it as it exited his body, leaving him with a gaping, ugly wound.  He screamed at her, his body surging forward despite the magical tremors that still wracked it.

"Hush, lest the villagers hear you upon their return."

"To hell with…" 

            Inuyasha's epithet was cut short as Kikyo reached into her robes and produced a small prayer strip scribed with a spirit ward and placed it on his forehead.  It was a testament to Kikyo's former spiritual powers that, even in their corrupt and deteriorating state, the energies within the ward were potent enough to paralyze Inuyasha completely despite his formidable heritage.  As his body seized up, Kikyo unceremoniously pushed him over into a nearby patch of undergrowth.  She carelessly dropped the soiled arrow next to him as she turned to walk away.

"The girl's parents shall return for her remains shortly.  Once I have tended to their grief I will be back to see you, Inuyasha."

*****

            Sango set down the hiraikotsu and stretched deliciously.  The day had been a long one, spent as it was running a rat demon to ground.  The elderly couple who had hired her were destitute in the extreme, due largely to the rat's voracious and repeated assaults upon their grain stores and chickens, so she had accepted the task of slaying the creature for no greater a payment than spending the night in their home.  Though the beast was simple enough to kill once forced into a confrontation, it had been late in the evening before Kirara tracked the monster and rooted it out of its hiding place in a long forgotten deadfall.  

            The old couple was long since asleep when Sango returned, and it was therefore with the utmost care and stealth that she made her way to the mat that they had prepared for her.  Their home, more a hut than anything else, consisted of but one room, with little more to it than a table, a modest shrine, and a small hearth.  

_Not too bad of a life_, Sango thought to herself as she curled up on her mat.  Kirara quickly nestled in against her, falling asleep almost instantaneously.  Sango ran her fingers through Kirara's fur, letting her eyes rest on the elderly pair sleeping nearby.  She wondered how many nights they had spent together in this place, how many dawns they had seen side by side.  She allowed herself a small smile, and just the slightest bit of jealousy, before she surrendered herself to her exhaustion and let sleep take her.

*****

            If not for the gift his father passed onto him in the form of his powerful demonic constitution, Inuyasha would almost certainly have bled to death long before Kikyo returned for him.  He felt as is he had been laying in the dirt forever, his body paralyzed as it was by her spirit ward.  At one point a passing dog had stopped to sniff him, but otherwise he had gone unmolested for the past several hours.  The sun had long disappeared beneath the horizon when Kikyo's scent trickled into his senses.  Inuyasha struggled to lift his head as the sound of her footsteps drew near.

"Forgive me, Inuyasha.  I had not expected so long of a delay."

            There was a long silence, as if she were waiting for him to reply.  After a moment, almost as an afterthought, she knelt down beside him and plucked the spirit ward from his forehead.  Inuyasha's head spun as his strength rushed back to him, and he was on his feet in an instant.

"You've got a hell of a lot of nerve doing something like that!"  Inuyasha couldn't remember  the last time he raised his voice to Kikyo, and his throat constricted momentarily as he struggled with the urge to censor himself.  After an instant he remembered the circumstances and swore at himself for being so stupid.

            Kikyo's impossibly pale skin almost seemed to glow in the moonlight, and she let the corners of her mouth rise into the faintest and most demure of smiles.

"I remember that fire in your voice,"  she said, rising to her feet.  She drew in a long breath, trapping him in her sad eyes.  "I've missed you, Inuyasha."

            Inuyasha retreated a step, as if he could somehow evade her words.  She moved towards him, reaching out almost timidly and curling her fingers in his cloak.  Since their last meeting he had thought a thousand times of what he would do if he were to see her again, but as she pressed her delicate weight against his chest, all he could do was stand transfixed in the onyx pools of her eyes.  His heart pounded in his ears as she nestled her head against his shoulder.  Kikyo sighed softly and wrapped her slender arms around him.

_Damn it_, he thought bitterly.  _ Why couldn't it have been like this before?_

"Why don't you hold me, Inuyasha?"  Kikyo's voice was suddenly the shy whisper it had been fifty years before, when they had first begun to show tenderness to one another.

            Inuyasha's hand trembled as he set them on Kikyo's narrow shoulders.  She tilted her head to one side, and for one short second all he was aware of was her cold, silken hair draping over his right hand.  She slowly leaned forward, her lips tempting and sweet.  Inuyasha closed his eyes.

"Stay with me, Inuyasha," Kikyo cooed softly, her breath whispering across his lips like butterfly wings.  "Stay with me."

            Mustering up all the willpower he had left, Inuyasha pushed her away.

"Kikyo, no…"  he began, the flames in his voice thoroughly quenched.  

            Kikyo's eyes hardened so suddenly that Inuyasha braced himself for an attack.  The transformation from the lovely, pure woman he had once loved back into the flinty, cold specter that she had become was instantaneous and complete.  Kikyo looked him over coldly. 

"Why must you cling to this life so dearly, Inuyasha?"  She asked, her voice cool and even.  "Do you wish so badly to forget about me?"

 "You know that's not true, Kikyo," Inuyasha began.  His voice trailed off as she slipped something small and sharp from the sleeve of her robe.  A familiar smell, too faint to make out, suddenly hung about her.

"Your heart is mine, Inuyasha,"  Kikyo whispered, icy anger filling her voice.  "Your heart and your life."

            Kikyo raised her hand to her mouth and ran the object in her grasp across her lips.  When she pulled her hand away, her lips were glistening in the ghostly moonlight.  Every fiber of Inuyasha's being screamed at him to flee, that something bad was about to happen, but something kept him in place.  Even in the macabre blue glow of the moon she was beautiful.

"When no one else will lay claim to you Inuyasha, when all your attachments in this world have been broken, will you return to me?"

            Before he could reply, Kikyo's arms folded loosely around his neck.  

"When your business is done in this life, will you return to me?" Kikyo insisted, her voice suddenly threatening tears.

"Yes…" Inuyasha heard himself say, his voice faraway from his own ears.  He felt lost, detached from what was happening around him. "I will."

            Kikyo kissed him, her lips unnaturally cool against his.  Inuyasha felt his arms wrap around her, embracing her, needful of her.  The rest of the world went black.  Only they remained, their bodies twined perfectly about one another.  Then the bitter taste of blood swirled through his mouth, and Inuyasha pulled away from her with a start.  Kikyo was smiling at him.

"You never tasted of my flesh in life, Inuyasha," she began.  "But in death, know the taste of my blood."

"Kikyo, what did you…"

"And know you, Inuyasha, the sweet taste of a child's blood as well,"  Kikyo's quietly knowing smile had returned, but a new predatory glint had appeared in her eyes.  "Remember it well, Inuyasha, for your demon blood lusts for it.  Your demon blood wishes to taste of it again."  

"Damn you, Kikyo.  What's going on?" Inuyasha demanded.  There was a tremor of fear in his voice.

            An eerie blue aura shone about Kikyo as her soul collectors appeared and began to coil around her, staring at Inuyasha with their shining, empty eyes.  The demons tangled around Kikyo's slight frame and slowly began to lift her into the night sky.

"When no one else would claim your heart, Inuyasha, return to me,"  Kikyo called down to him.  "Once your sins in the world are too great, Hell will welcome us together."

            Inuyasha stood staring up at her until she was gone.  The taste of blood, sweet and thick, washed over his senses.  His mouth flooded with saliva as if trying to wash the taste away. After the priestess had disappeared, Inuyasha should his head angrily.

"Damn you, Kikyo.  Why do you always have to do things like that?"

            As he was about to walk away, he happened to glance at where Kikyo had been standing.  Resting on the flattened grass, barely visible in the faint light, was the bloody fang of a kappa.  As Inuyasha bent down to examine it, he barely even noticed himself licking the last traces of blood from his lips.


	12. Flesh and Blood

Inuyasha woke up slowly, the sounds of morning in the forest furtively intruding into his senses before finally jarring him awake. He irritably opened one eye, realizing for the first time that he was suddenly on the ground. _Must've fallen out of the damned tree_, he thought ruefully. He pushed himself up, his muscles strangely stiff and resistant, and looked around him. His head was swimming, and before long he let himself flop onto his back, eyes closed, so as to listen to the forest around him and clear his head.

He had been turning Kikyo's words over and over in head since the previous night, trying in vain to figure out exactly what she had meant. Sure, she had cut her own lip with the kappa's tooth, and sure, he had gotten a taste of her blood, and maybe even that kid's, but what the hell did that matter? It wasn't like he hadn't tasted blood before.

Intending to take one last look at the sky before continuing on his journey, such as it was, Inuyasha opened his eyes and stared up at the sun. Pain flared instantly in his eyes, and he let out a surprised cry as heat lightning seemed to flash in his brain. He rolled onto his knees, white hot stars racing across his vision, and shook his head furiously. Tears stung his eyes as his ears began to ring.

"Damn it all," he growled, digging his claws into the soil as a spasm of pain fell over him. "Did Kikyo do this?"

As if in response, a cool, slender hand fell on his shoulder.

"Hell will welcome us," Kikyo's voice cooed from behind him.

Sudden rage flashed through him, and Inuyasha wheeled around, lashing out blindly with his claws. They found no purchase, and he overbalanced, stumbling back down to his knees. In spite of the pain, he forced his eyes open. He was alone.

"What the hell?" Inuyasha said, suddenly apprehensive.

Deep in the forest a bird began to sing. The nose echoed cacophonously in Inuyasha's ears and he grit his teeth angrily at the maddening din. It was quite a while before he bothered trying to stand again. He could tell that his feet had no intention of staying under him, so he simply stayed put, waiting for the episode to pass. In time he felt confident enough to hoist himself to his feet, still leaning against a tree. His eyes still burnt and the world was still spinning crazily around him, but he decided to return to the kappa's lake, thinking that perhaps he had caught a fever that might be helped by the cool water.

------

The morning was cool and pleasant, with a gentle breeze playfully rippling the grass. Sango and Kirara had been walking for nearly an hour with no particular place to go. Without Kagome's ability to sense the Shikon Jewel to guide them, their lives had quickly become those of wandering exterminators, and while it wasn't necessarily unfulfilling work, it _was_ rather unproductive. It seemed as if there was a mysterious lack of demons in the vicinity, at least near the villages. Yesterday's rat notwithstanding, they had not encountered a single wild demon of any kind, much less one with a shard of the Jewel.

_Not that it matters, Sango_ thought a little glumly. _Kagome took most of the Jewel with her when she left_.

The matter of the Jewel had clung tenaciously to the back of her mind for a while now, though it had mostly been supplanted by thoughts of her friends until this particular moment. It seemed almost selfish to be thinking of the Jewel when there were so many other matters, personal matters, that ate at her. Although Sango _knew_ that she had never thought of Kagome as merely a tool for shard-hunting, she still felt awkward thinking of Kagome's departure in terms of the loss of the Jewel. It seemed like a callous shift in priorities. Nonetheless, it was important to decide how best to continue now that the possibility of fully completing the Jewel was gone.

In some ways, she had decided, the removal of Shikon Jewel from the playing field was a boon. If the Jewel couldn't be completed, then Naraku obviously couldn't harness its evil power to its fullest potential. Granted, it was now impossible for the Jewel to be completely purified, but it seemed like a rational enough argument to say that the Jewel was safer if it was divided between the two eras. Unless, it suddenly occurred to her, Naraku or something else realized where the rest of the Jewel was and crossed over into Kagome's time to retrieve it. It seemed unlikely that Kagome could single-handedly protect the Jewel from a powerful or determined enough foe.

Sango frowned. Whenever Kagome invaded her thoughts her heart grew heavy. Sango pushed her friend out her mind and sighed.

-------

Though the lake was not far off, it took Inuyasha over an hour to reach his destination. His equilibrium seemed to be deteriorating and the sunlight sliced angrily into his eyes. He walked slowly, moving from one tree to another to keep his balance, all the while uttering a string of epithets and curses. His skin was flushed and hot, and icy beads of sweat raced down his back. He became increasingly nauseous, and twice his stomach churned and twisted so badly that he dropped to his knees retching. The noise of the forest filled his head, bouncing against the inside of his skull like gravel. Finally, when the tree line was finally held at bay by the lake's small beach, Inuyasha staggered to the ground and drug himself towards the water. He wasn't sure if there was anyone else around, his sense of smell was flooded with a metallic, bitter scent, but by this point he didn't care. With what felt like all of his effort, he pulled himself into the shallows and thrust his head beneath the surface.

The cold water washing over him felt delicious, and he waded further out into the lake. His robe was quickly sodden and it clung to him like a tangle of wet vines, but he was unmindful. All that mattered was the flood of coolness against his flesh, and for a moment he felt very much refreshed. Inuyasha let himself float, facedown, for as long as he was able, letting the silence of the water swirl around him. He shut his eyes, welcoming the comfortable blackness. At last, when his air was spent, he threw his head back and let the warm air rush over him again.

When he opened his eyes a thousand voices shrieked in his head, and he staggered backwards as if in retreat. The sunlight reflected chaotically off the surface of the water in a radiant, scintillating storm of brightness. Inuyasha covered his eyes, crazily sure that they would burst from the pain, and stumbled clumsily through the waist-deep water. He blundered back and forth for what seemed like forever, not daring to remove his hands from his eyes, until at long last a cloud mercifully passed in front of the sun.

Inuyasha opened his eyes slowly, blinking back caustic tears. Staring up at him from the surface of the water was his own reflection, waxen and haggard. His eyes were bloodshot, the pupils nearly invisible slits. His normally pristine hair clung to his face like dirty strings.

_Pathetic,_ he thought to himself with a snarl. _Too damned pathetic._

He swiped at the reflection with his claws and it exploded into maddening frenzy of white hot light before tauntingly returning. The face looking up at his was infuriatingly defiant even as it looked disgustingly weak. Inuyasha bellowed, driving a fist through the reflection and then staggering up onto the bank. He was dimly aware of blood trickling between his fingers from the angry wounds his claws had dug into his palm.

As he left the water behind he found it necessary to walk on his hands and knees again, no longer because his balance was faulty but because his strength seemed to have abandoned him. His arms shook under his own weight, but he drove himself forward with pure anger until at last he collapsed against the gritty, sandy soil.

"Are you alright?"

The voice was that of a child. A human child. Inuyasha could smell it now. It was female. Inuyasha looked up, only to find it standing over him, its eyes wide with concern and fear. Fear. Inuyasha smiled to himself. The stink of the child's fear coursed through his senses, setting his body ablaze with long-forgotten energy. Inuyasha dug his claws into the soil with anticipation.

"Are, are you alright?" it repeated.

It was small and lean, with slender muscles wound tightly beneath smooth, tender skin. Inuyasha could hear its heart pounding in its chest and he could almost taste the sweet blood coursing through its body. Its legs looked strong. It would run. It would run and he would chase it down.

Inuyasha didn't bother to stand, he simply gathered himself on his haunches and sprang at the child, his claws lashing out evilly. The child threw itself backwards, barely avoiding his talons as they zipped past its eyes and sitting down hard on the ground. Inuyasha was upon it instantly, his claws sinking deep into the meat of its shoulders as he throttled its head against the soil. When its struggling began to slow, Inuyasha jerked its head to one side and bit down hard on its throat, teeth slicing cleanly through delicious flesh as the rich, hot taste of blood rushed into his mouth. The child clung to him weakly as he began to consume it…

The little girl's scream snapped Inuyasha back to reality. His hand was closed tightly around her left ankle. For an instant he was too stunned to let go, and he stared stupidly up at her until her she screamed again. He released her, shaking the last traces of the bizarre fantasy from his mind. For some reason she didn't bolt immediately, instead taking a few slow steps backwards, her tiny body trembling. Inuyasha lay on the ground watching her. His skin turned to gooseflesh as he realized that his mouth was watering.

"Run, you idiot!" Inuyasha screamed at her, and she did just that, bolting off down the path to the village. Her basket of laundry spilled out onto the dirt.

Inuyasha rose to his feet. He was shaking, not with fear but with excitement. He could see his heart pounding through his chest as if it were trying to escape. It felt like every hair on his body was standing on end. His breath was hot and trembling. Every fiber of his being wanted to bolt after the fleeing girl, run her down and leap upon her…

At his side, the Tetsusaiga began to pulse warmly. The furor in his heart was calmed for the briefest of moments, then began to grow again. Grimacing, Inuyasha brought his fist up sharply against his forehead. A small pain, like a wasp sting, lingered as twin trails of blood snaked down either side of his nose. He hit himself hard enough to cross his eyes, but at least the shaking stopped. Inuyasha gave the girl one last look as she disappeared down the path, then he leapt into a tree and disappeared into the woods.

-------

The cold breeze whipped against Sango like a slap in the face. She sensed nothing nearby, but her hand fell reflexively to the hilt of her sword. The chill wind was gone in an instant, leaving only the warm summer air in its wake. Sango found herself staring into the woods, though she wasn't sure what she expected to see. Just as she had convinced herself to move on, a crow shrieked in the distance. It was answered by another of its kind. And another. And another. At her side, Kirara growled softly.


	13. Faces and Voices

Sango's eyes narrowed as she peered into the woods, straining to find the source of the foreboding sensation that suddenly swept over her. Though the day was bright, the canopy of trees kept the forest in a state of perpetual twilight. Nothing stirred in the woods, but Sango loosened her katana in its scabbard. The cacophony of crows had subsided, and now it seemed impossibly quiet. A low growl rumbled from Kirara's throat, and if Sango doubted her own senses, she didn't doubt those of her companion. Something was coming.

After a long moment of stillness, Sango was almost ready to ignore her instincts and move on. Then she heard it, a mad rustling through the foliage, and she tensed herself in preparation. The noise rushed towards her, but the undergrowth was unmoving. For a fraction of a second she began to panic, unsure of the strange turn the situation had taken, but then her eyes widened with realization.

"It's in the trees," she hissed to herself, drawing her sword and retreating a step backwards along the dusty path. A sweltering blast of heat rippled through the summer air as Kirara transformed into her true form in a burst of flame.

Sango adjusted her grip on the hilt of her sword, steeling herself for whatever battle might await. As the commotion drew nearer, her well-trained senses finally detected the swirling demonic aura of the approaching creature. Kirara impatiently raked her claws against the ground. Only a sharp glance from Sango kept her from hurling herself into the woods to engage the enemy head on.

Then it came, exploding out of the trees in a shower of falling leaves and broken branches. Sango squinted against the harsh light of the afternoon sun, trying to discern the demon's features as its red shape arched high overhead. The demon landed on the opposite side of the path, near another patch of woods, but the grace and agility of its leap was unapparent as it staggered awkwardly to its knees upon touching down. The creature wore a red cloak, and a mane of white hair spilled over its shoulders. A pair of bestial ears were slicked back along its head.

_It looks like Inuyasha_, she thought, but the demon's aura felt much different than her friend's. While Inuyasha's demon aura did reflect his untamed nature, this creature was absolutely, even unnaturally, feral.

"What business have you here, demon?" Sango asked, her voice as hard and sharp as a sword's blade.

The creature slowly turned its head, fixing one narrowed eye on her over its shoulder. It moved as if to stand, but instead sank into a low quadrupedal crouch, its unblinking gaze never wavering. The hairs on Sango's neck stood up. She thought she saw the demon's mouth widen into a grin. An unexpected rush of anger passed through her so strongly that she shivered. Leveling her sword at the demon, she advanced a step.

"What is your business here, demon?" She asked again, her voice tinged with venom.

The demon whirled to attack her with impossible speed, and its grimy claws passed within a hair's breadth of her face even as Sango threw herself backwards to avoid the assault. As Sango hurriedly regained her footing the demon overbalanced and stumbled, nearly falling flat before finding its balance and once again lashing out at her. This time Sango was ready, and she slapped the creature's arm aside with the flat of her sword before quickly bringing her blade across its face. The demon pulled back at the last second, probably saving its life, but Sango's attack laid open forehead. It retreated a few steps, blinking blood out of its eyes even as the wound on its head began to close.

Sango lunged forward to cut her foe down, but as her blade began its descent she caught a clear glimpse of the demon's face. What she saw made her heart leap into her throat, for Inuyasha stood before her, his eyes wide with fear and confusion. So great was her shock that she barely thought to halt her attack.

It seemed like forever that they stood there, the edge of Sango's sword resting on Inuyasha's shoulder as neither one made a move. The malevolent grin was gone from his face, and while he was covered with dirt and his own blood, Inuyasha's handsomely carved features were just as she remembered them. Except his for his eyes. Where once they had shone with a strong, reassuring light, the color of amber at sunset, they were now dull and murky. His pupils looked like milk spilt on black saucers.

_What's wrong with him...? _

__Kirara, still at Sango's side, cocked her head and sniffed the air, trying to make sense of what was happening.

"Inuyasha…?" Sango said at last. She thought she heard her voice tremble a little.

* * *

"Inuyasha…?"

It was familiar, the human's scent. It was a spicy smell, warm and cool at the same time. Each time he inhaled, he could taste her scent, practically feel it coursing through his senses. It made the twisting feeling in his stomach settle a little. He found that he no longer felt like retching and bit by bit he began to relax.

"Where have you been? Why didn't you come back?"

Had he met this human before? It was talking to him, but he couldn't quite understand. Each word seemed to dance just out of reach in his mind, its meaning elusive and taunting before finally disappearing into smoky darkness. He tried to concentrate, but whenever he reached out to grasp one word the others darted that much farther away. It wasn't long before all the sounds jumbled in his head like a swarm of stinging insects and it was all he could do to keep from clawing at himself, digging himself open to let them out. And still the human kept talking, pouring more and more infuriating words into his already overflowing head. He felt his lips begin to curl back in a snarl.

"Inuyasha, are you alright? What's wrong?"

The pit of his stomach went cold with sudden rage, but before the emotion could overwhelm him another sensation drowned it out. Another heartbeat joined his own, pulsing warmly through his body from somewhere near his hip. Each pulsation found his heart calmer and mind clearer, though the meaning of the human's words still eluded him. The second heartbeat grew stronger, pounding the fog away from his brain, and suddenly a word flashed through his mind. No, not a word. A name. The source of the heartbeat. Tetsusaiga.

Tetsusaiga. His mind found a handhold and pulled itself out of the fog that swirled within it. The sword at his side, Tetsusaiga, was pulling him back, drawing him away from the unnatural craving for violence and savagery that snarled and paced in his heart like a caged animal. He was sick. The human in front of him was someone he knew, that he recognized. Clarity flooded back to him so quickly it made him dizzy, and he wobbled on his feet.

"Inuyasha!" cried the human, putting her hands on his shoulders to keep him from falling. He was dimly aware of a metallic noise as her sword fell forgotten to the ground.

Inuyasha. He blinked stupidly for a moment. That was his name. His mind found another handhold, straining to drag itself further out of the mire. He looked at the human, into her shining brown eyes, and, finally, remembered.

"Sango…"

She smiled at him when he said her name and pulled him against her. Inuyasha let her support some of his weight, limply hanging his arms over her shoulders. Without warning he was nauseatingly lightheaded, and while he desperately wanted to say something, _anything_, it took all of his energy to simply keep from collapsing. He closed his eyes, letting his head rest against her neck. He could feel her body press against him with the slow rhythm of her breathing. Sango's fingers were curled tightly in his cloak and she was whispering something to him, something that seemed very far away and hard to make out.

Inuyasha started to talk, but even as he opened his mouth he realized he could feel her heart beating against his chest, and this made him fall silent. Soon her heartbeat was all her could hear. Everything else fell away from him until he was in darkness, with only the sound of her heart to show that he wasn't alone. It was a strong heart, a young heart, full of vigor and energy like a wild pony. It pumped blood, warm, rich blood that would taste as spicy as she smelled through her taut, lean body. She was hardened by years of rigorous exercise and training, and he would have to strain and chew to pull her muscles away from her bones…

As he began to tighten his arms around her shoulders the Tetsusaiga let out another pulse, this one so strong that it blurred his vision. Inuyasha shoved her away from him, shaking his head in desperation, trying to clear his thoughts. He staggered a few steps, turning away from her and dropping to his knees. A black cloud began to reach snakelike tendrils into his mind, and the waves of energy from the Tetsusaiga could only slow, not halt, their encroachment. A hand fell on his shoulder, and his vision went red with inexplicable anger, but that anger was instantly replaced with an explosion of cold, twisting fear.

"Stay away from me, Sango!" he managed to cry out as her stumbled to his feet and threw himself into the woods.

Behind him he heard her utter a surprised shout, but he didn't dare look back. He plunged through the forest, mindless of everything but trying to outrun the hunger. Branches ripped at him, tearing at his face and snagging his hair, but he didn't slow down until his legs began to go numb with exhaustion. His lungs were on fire, and only when he stopped, so breathless that stars danced across his vision, did he realize it was already nightfall. He collapsed beneath a tree and soon fell into a fitful, dreamless slumber.


	14. The Priestess and Her Curse

The dream began as it always did, with the angry hiss of leaping flames and the stench of burning bodies. Then came the sea of people, screaming, shoving each other, trampling the fallen. Kikyo's eyes widened in horror and she turned to run, only to be thrown to the ground as the crush of people overtook her. Tears stung her eyes as a heavy boot crushed her hand. Even above the roar of the crowd she could hear delicate bones snap and grind into each other. She tried to stand, to pull herself free of the human riptide, but before she took her second step a hard shove from behind sent her sprawling. Her forehead struck the ground so hard that her vision went blurry. She blinked, noticing the blood streaming down her face only as a harsh sting in her eyes.. She began to cry, but everyone ignored her in their race to get away.

Kikyo curled into a tight ball, trying to protect herself until the crowd passed by. Twice her ribs were stomped cruelly and each time her breath was driven from her chest in an anguished sob, but she didn't dare move. In the dream she was no battle-hardened priestess but instead merely a scared little girl. In the dream, she was in hell, and all she could do was cover her eyes and wait.

Suddenly she was alone. The street was empty, and there was nothing around her but smoke swirling through the canyon of steel and glass. Slowly, cautiously, Kikyo rose to her feet, cradling her tiny broken hand against her chest. With stomach churning horror she realized that all of the buildings surrounding her were ablaze. The crackling flames seemed to laugh at her from their lofty perches on the rooftops. Underneath her, the ground heaved and a sound like thunder echoed in the distance. Then it came again. And again. Even though Kikyo had endured the dream enough times to know exactly what would happen next, she could do nothing to quell the swooning horror that came as she realized, for the hundredth night, that the cacophonous sounds were approaching footsteps. She spun on her heels, ready to run, but the ground seemed to leap up beneath her and she fell gracelessly to her knees.

Never once in the many times she had the dream did Kikyo _want_ to turn around, to look back and see just what it was that she had been running from, but she always did. Blackened buildings rose like giant grave markers, stabbing upwards toward the churning black skies. Behind the buildings burned the perpetual sunset of a city ablaze, and acrid columns of smoke stretched up to support the falling storm clouds that swirled above. She stood up slowly, her legs quaking uncooperatively, and swallowed dryly, trying to force her heart back down into her chest. The clouds of smoke were becoming thicker, and they reached out their tendrils to claw her reddened eyes. The darkness seemed to close in around her.

Then, above the buildings, she could see its head. It was black, difficult to make out against the backdrop of the sky, but its mouth was set in a cold smile of dirty fangs. Its eyes, blank, dead eyes without pupils, burned with an evil light, cutting twin paths through the gloom. The monster's head turned slowly, as if scanning the horizon behind her, and Kikyo stood as still as she could, hoping that perhaps, just perhaps, it would overlook her. It let loose a guttural growl that Kikyo felt as much as heard . Though she couldn't be sure from a distance, she thought she could see the air in front of its face rippling with heat as it exhaled.

Kikyo must have made some small noise, just enough to attract the creature's attention, because it snapped its head downwards, fixing its hateful, empty eyes on her. Her stomach turned to ice. The monster stared at her for what felt like an eternity, and Kikyo's realized in queasy terror that it wasn't just _seeing_ her like an animal, it was _looking at_ her, a malign intelligence burning behind its ghostly white eyes. Then it threw its head back, and Kikyo could see the powerful muscles in its throat working as it roared. It was a sound unlike anything she'd ever heard, a bellow of the purest rage and hatred echoing maddeningly off of the few buildings that still stood.

And then she could hear nothing, not even the sound of the building crumbling as the monster began to step through it, tearing at steel and mortar with its claws as though it was cutting through a paper door. She didn't know why, but Kikyo took a step forward. Her body kept going long after her feet stopped moving, and in the back of her mind she knew she was falling, but somehow it didn't seem important. Even as the street rushed at her from the front, a darker blackness came hurtling towards her from behind. Kikyo's vision began to dim.

Strong arms circled around her small waist, catching her and lifting her away from the street. As she was hefted up onto a friendly shoulder she caught a final glimpse of the monster, its head blocking out the sky. Its jaws began to open, and its maw was filled with leaping blue flames…

* * *

Kikyo suddenly found herself staring into the quiet night sky. Crickets chirped all around her in a delicate chorus that sounded throughout the forest. She was standing in the field west of the village, her feet wet from the dewy grass. Two of her soul collectors circled her lazily, their bodies dancing through the air like serpentine ribbons. Kikyo shut her eyes until the last traces of the dream finally disappeared from her sight. She was bathed in sweat despite the chill night air, her silken hair clinging to her face in strings. For a long moment she stood there with her eyes closed, hugging her arms across her chest. A cool breeze danced across her face.

The dream only came to her once when she was alive, shortly after she and Inuyasha had begun courting. She never told him about it. She was too ashamed at how much it had shaken her. Looking back, Kikyo thought that she would have told him eventually, that in time she would have revealed to him that small vulnerability as they began to more fully share themselves with one another. She let a small smile creep across her lips at the thought of the intimacy they might have shared, but it was short-lived.

_I died before I could tell him_.

Kikyo's smile was gone before it had fully formed. She had been killed, and the life that once stretched out before her and her paramour ended on a funeral pyre.

_And now…now there is only this, _Kikyo thought, aware as ever of the stolen souls that rippled and swam through her counterfeit body. They constantly moved within her, and she felt them as spots of warmth in her perpetually cool body of transmuted clay and grave dirt.

The dream had begun to come more and more frequently after her resurrection. Even now, changed as she was from the woman she had once been, she was terrified by the dream in a way she didn't understand. And, just as before, it shamed her to be frightened by such a thing. She had struck down too many demons to be afraid of her nightmares, but still it came, each night more vivid and with more terrible intensity. Many times she had watched the sunrise only because the dream continued to burn in her mind long after she awoke, the monster's luminous eyes shining in the darkness whenever she closed her eyes.

Kikyo frowned at herself, once again disappointed by her own inability to ignore something so trite as a simple bad dream. As she turned to walk towards the village, she found herself thinking of Inuyasha. She wondered if the spell had run its course yet, if he had realized in one of his more and more infrequent periods of lucidity all the savagery he had wrought. She knew well enough of Inuyasha's pride, how he considered himself superior to the more barbaric of his kind. Sooner or later the horrors he committed in his feral state would overwhelm him, and then, with no ties left to this world, he would return to her. She would take his life, along with her own, and rest with him for eternity in the afterworld.

_Then_, she thought wistfully, _perhaps I shall tell him about the dream_.

* * *

"Lady Sango."

The small voice was so faint that Sango almost brushed it aside as her imagination. She had been astride Kirara for hours, circling high above the forest canopy in search of Inuyasha, and it wasn't remotely beyond the realm of possibility that her mind was playing tricks on her. She still couldn't put the image of Inuyasha's milky, sick eyes out of her mind, and that alone had lead her to press on long after both she and Kirara were exhausted. After the day's events, hearing voices seemed like the least of her worries.

"Lady Sango, I must speak with you," the tiny voice insisted, and this time Sango recognized it as Myoga the flea. She looked down to find him peering at her from the fur on the back of Kirara's head.

_Now where did he come from?_

"I don't have time for you now, Myoga," she replied, hardly paying him a second glance. She gave Kirara a gentle squeeze with her legs, signaling the demon to descend closer to the treetops. By this point she had abandoned strategy in favor of the hope that Kirara would, by some force of luck or miracles, catch Inuyasha's scent on the breeze and manage to follow it to its source.

"I must speak with you about Lord Inuyasha," Myoga implored, and this finally got her attention.


	15. The Hunger

Myoga rummaged in his knapsack, eventually bringing forth his tiny pipe. Sango frowned as he seemed to take ages to light the thing, and by the time he put it to his lips she was about to burst. The flea drew in a long breath, and tiny wisps of smoke danced around his head as he exhaled. At last Sango could wait no longer.

"Myoga, do you know what's happened to Inuyasha?"

Myoga sighed as loudly as a flea can.

"Indeed I do, Sango," Myoga said, tenting his fingers. "Though I wish I didn't."

Sango would've snatched him up by the collar if she could've, but had to settle for merely giving him her sternest look. The flea look at her innocently, taking another long draw from his pipe.

"Tell me what's happened, Myoga," Sango said. "There's something badly wrong with Inuyasha and I need to know what it is."

"A curse has been laid upon him by Lady Kikyo," Myoga began, his voice turning sheepish.

"How do you know that?" Sango asked, her eyes narrowing.

The flea hesitated, looking away and rolling his tiny thumbs over each other. Sango signaled Kirara to search for a place to land, though her gaze never left the flea.

"_Myoga,_" she said crossly.

"Well, I, uh, happened to be with him at the time…" began the flea in his most ingratiating voice. "You see, after Inuyasha split from the party he encountered Kikyo near a remote village and…"

Sango plucked Myoga from Kirara's fur, his small body fitting neatly in her palm.

"You were with Inuyasha this entire time?" she practically spat, squeezing him for extra emphasis.

"Indeed, Sango, I was," Myoga said, a twinge of cowardice obvious in his voice. "You see, my fortunes have been, well, rather unfortunate lately and I had merely stopped by for a meal, but then, seeing as how no one took notice, I thought that I would remain for a while and enjoy the accommodations, but then all this chaos erupted…"

Sango's eyes fell and her face darkened.

"Then you know of what has transpired between Inuyasha and me. And that Kagome has left us for her time," Sango said softly, fresh guilt washing over her.

"It is neither my place nor my desire to pass judgment on Lord Inuyasha in such matters," Myoga replied quickly. "Nor on you, Sango. But there are more important matters at hand, and that is the matter of the curse that afflicts m'lord."

Sango nodded, surprised at the relief she felt at being spared a rebuke from Myoga. She was paying so much attention to the flea that it caught her off guard when Kirara touched down on the forest floor, and she lurched forward as the demon came to a halt.

"Tell me all that you know," she said, regaining her composure.

Myoga waited a long moment before he began, as though collecting his thoughts. Sango fidgeted on Kirara's back, her legs aching from hours of riding. At long last, the flea hopped to a comfortable spot between Kirara's ears, lit his pipe, and began to speak.

"I believe it is referred to as the 'curse of feral hunger', though I may be in error," he began, his voice burdened with concern. "It was used in olden times by corrupt holy men as a means of driving peaceful demons mad with bloodlust."

"Why would anyone want to do that?" Sango interjected.

"So that they might be slain in clear conscience, of course," Myoga replied, clucking his tongue sorrowfully. "In days past, cooperation between men and demons was not so unheard of as it is now, and occasionally circumstances found peasants more loyal to a friendly demon than the local lord. Naturally, this didn't sit well with the nobles, and the curse was concocted to break these bonds of loyalty. Not only did this allow lords to defame and murder benevolent demons, but it also made possible the expansion of their holdings into the demon's territory. And, of course, there were always monks willing to blaspheme their vows by performing such an ill-conceived rite in exchange for titles and privileged positions."

"How would Kikyo know of such a thing?"

"I suspect that her training would have included the study of such malevolent spells. Given Kikyo's position it would seem only natural that she would be familiar with inimical magic, if only as preparation for countering it in battle, " Myoga said. "Remember that fifty years ago Kikyo was among the most powerful priestesses alive, and that her stewardship of the Shikon Jewel was a matter of incalculable importance."

"I see," Sango said, nodding resolutely. "Then tell me how to break this curse."

"I'm not sure that's possible, Sango," Myoga sighed. "You've seen the torment that it has wrought on Lord Inuyasha, and the curse has be upon him for a mere day. It's only through the Tetsusaiga's intervention and his own force of will that he has any control left at all. I fear that should he succumb to the dark urgings the curse is forcing upon him, his mind could be shattered forever. It feeds upon the bloodlust of its victims. If they do indeed taste of human flesh, as the curse intends, then they will develop an ever-greater hunger for it."

"Then I have to stop him from…" Sango's voice wavered as the words forced themselves past her lips. "From _eating_ anyone?"

A chill went down her spine as she thought of being in his arms just hours before, as he surely must have struggled with the urge to attack her.

_But he didn't_, she thought. _So he must not be too far gone_.

"How long will it take for the curse to run its course?"

"I do not know," Myoga said sadly. "I've never heard of a demon escaping it's clutches."

Sango leaned forward, resting her face in her hands and trying to think. Inuyasha was quickly becoming more and more dangerous, and she knew in her heart that, as a demon slayer, she might have to hunt him down if he gave into the curse. Though she loved him, she had been trained from birth to protect the innocent from the depravities of malign demons and there no doubt in her mind that she would kill Inuyasha if doing so was the only way to prevent the shedding of innocent blood.

_After all, if he succumbs to the bloodlust then he's no longer Inuyasha. He's just another demon._

She winced as those words cut through her mind.

"Wait," Myoga suddenly exclaimed. "Perhaps Lord Inuyasha does indeed stand a chance."

The flea stabbed a finger skyward, and Sango's eyes followed it slowly upwards. Her gaze came to rest on the luminous sliver of the waning moon, shining like a knife blade against the velvet backdrop of night.

Kagome looked up from her notebook, sparing a smile for the grinning statue of a shisa dog that was perched on the desk. It sat on its haunches, watching her with wide, fascinated eyes. Its mouth was fixed in a lopsided grin, its sharp fangs pleasantly arranged in an display of perpetual mirth.

"The mouth is closed to keep the good luck in," Kagome said pertly to no one in particular as she rapped her pencil against the desk. She smiled thinly at the statue, but couldn't help casting a glance over her shoulder as the rustling of the trees in the night wind grew momentarily louder.

Her eyes widened a little as she stared out of her window, for although the branches of the tree outside were swaying excitedly, the curtains that framed the window hung motionless and undisturbed. The fragment of the Shikon Jewel around her neck suddenly seemed very heavy. And warm.


	16. Thinking of the Future

Myoga made good his escape at some point while Sango was laboring to ignite a campfire. Kirara alerted her to the flea's retreat with a tiny squeak, but Sango let him go. He had already told her everything he knew, so she didn't _really_ need him anyway. In any event, circumstances had changed once again and she needed time to think, not to make conversation with a flea. If Myoga's theory was correct, then there still might be a chance to help Inuyasha.

_Of course,_ she thought_, I have no guarantee that Myoga's right about the new moon_.

Sango knew for certain that Myoga was correct about at least one matter. Inuyasha's demon blood waned with the moon, until, on the night of the new moon, his human blood briefly gained control, transforming him into a mortal until daybreak. She had seen this for herself several times and had little reason to doubt that the transformation would still take place despite the curse of hunger that had been laid upon him. It was Myoga's other contention that she didn't entirely trust.

_Perhaps_, the flea had said, _the__ curse may be flushed out of his system when Lord Inuyasha transforms into a human. After all, so far as I know the curse works only on demons, so it may be broken when his human side takes control._

It seemed feasible enough. Inuyasha was fully human during the new moon, so the transformation might free him of the curse. On the other hand, just because Myoga didn't think the curse worked on humans didn't mean that it was so. Furthermore, Sango had no way of knowing whether or not he would relapse back into the curse as soon as his demon side resurfaced.

Sango frowned, impatiently jabbing a stick into the slowly spreading flames. There were too many chances in this plan, too many variables. As a young demon slayer she had always been taught to reconnoiter, to gather information, to maximize every chance for her own survival before putting a plan into motion. But now that was impossible. Inuyasha's condition held so many unknowns, and the time she had to intervene was so short, that Sango would have to just plunge in and take her chances. She hated going into any situation blindly. It was just too reckless.

_Too like Inuyasha_, she thought, and the image of Inuyasha in all of his bravado and arrogance that suddenly filled her mind made her smile in spite of herself.

It was with this image of Inuyasha, Inuyasha as he once was, in her mind and heart that Sango began to formulate her strategy. The moon was but a tiny sliver in the sky, and by tomorrow night it would have vanished. That, at least, was good luck. She had only to prevent Inuyasha's further deterioration for one more day before she would know for certain whether or not he could be saved.

She had no choice but to simply hope that Kirara would pick up his scent in the morning, otherwise the entire plan would be moot. Sango had no intention of engaging Inuyasha unless absolutely necessary. She was well aware of how formidable he was, and in this state he would almost surely have a madman's strength in addition to his own, so it seemed far more logical to simply stay near him until nightfall, herding him away from the villages if the need arose. With any luck he would regain his lucidity when he changed into his human form, and then it would be a simple matter of waiting for morning to see if the curse would return with his demon side.

_Hmpf__ There's no way it will work out that perfectly._

Sango frowned, holding up her smoldering stick and inspecting it idly before tossing it into the campfire. She was ill-prepared to handle Inuyasha in a physical confrontation, at least one of the kind that would be necessary here. Even if he did attack her, she would have to deal with him as sparingly as possible. If he could not be cured she have to think of ways to kill him, but for how she needed less injurious methods. Both her katana and the hiraikotsu were unsuited to the task of subduing Inuyasha without causing lasting physical harm. She winced at the thought of grievously wounding him with the hiraikotsu only for him to succumb to his injuries once he changed into his weaker human form and lost his demonic constitution.

Another matter nagged at her as well. She wasn't entirely certain whether or not Kikyo knew of Inuyasha's transformation. On one hand it seemed likely, for Inuyasha had been closer to Kikyo than he had to anyone else. On the other hand, the only reason Inuyasha's secret was known to the group was that he had simply been unable to hide it from them. Sango couldn't decide if she thought Inuyasha would volunteer something he considered to be such a great weakness, even to the woman he loved.

_The woman he loved_…

That thought echoed in her mind and Sango felt her heart sink. Those words sat heavily enough in her heart when only Kagome was attached to them; adding Kikyo made them almost unbearable. It was a long time before she was able to push the thought from her mind, but as the night wore on she realized that she had no choice but to get some rest before morning. Although she didn't really expect to fall asleep, Sango closed her eyes and listened to the crackling fire. Slumber claimed her slowly, with fragments of fantasy intruding on her thoughts little by little, gradually drowning out reality until Inuyasha's strong arms gathered her into a warm embrace and she knew that she was dreaming.

------------------

"The Self-Defense Force offered no comment today about the ongoing sightings of giant birds which have been reported throughout the country this weekend."

Kagome lay in bed staring up at the empty ceiling. Her grandfather was watching the eleven o'clock news downstairs and she could hear every word, partly because his failing hearing led him to keep the volume at an ear-splitting level and partly because the sound carried through the air conditioning vent. When she was a little girl she had always found that comforting. She'd had a lot of nightmares as a child, especially after the incident in Okinawa, and it was very reassuring in the middle of the night to know that her grandfather was there to protect her.

"On a similar note, scientists at Chiba University remain skeptical about the alleged sighting of a live Kameba turtle near Tokyo Bay on Thursday, citing that although a dead Kameba washed ashore at Hokkaido last December, no live specimens have been seen since 1970."

Kagome's hand wandered instinctively to the Shikon fragment that rested ingloriously in a fold of her nightshirt, and she toyed unthinkingly with the string that bound it around her neck. Listening to her grandfather watch the news had offered little comfort lately. In the past two weeks there had been a lot of sightings, people claiming to see enormous turtles and snakes, gigantic birds, huge mantises. Things like that were on the news frequently enough anyway, but this time it seemed different. Perhaps she was just nervous about keeping so large a piece of the Shikon Jewel in the modern era for so long, but all the reports of monsters popping up seemed like too much of a coincidence. And, of course, during the "earthquake" on Wednesday two flights of F-7s had gone over the city.

"The government doesn't send fighter jets to natural disasters," Kagome whispered to herself.

In the feudal era, she knew, the Shikon Jewel drew demons like a spiritual beacon. In modern times it had thus far attracted the attention of only two demonic beings, Mistress Centipede and the Mask of Flesh. Both had been unusual cases, as Mistress Centipede had come through the Bone-Eater's Well and the Mask of Flesh was a demon bound into a lasting physical form which had endured the intervening centuries. With very few exceptions, Kagome was unaware of even the presence of demons in the modern era. But in the modern era there were other things than demons. Things she had never discussed with Inuyasha, the reason that she had been nonplussed by the demons she encountered in the feudal age. Perhaps these things too were drawn to the Jewel, but Kagome couldn't be certain. She couldn't be certain, but she had a feeling.

For the past two days she had thought almost constantly about returning the Jewel to the feudal era, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Three times now she had stood staring into the well, and three times she had bitten her lip and forced herself to turn away. What could she possibly tell them? That she wasn't going to stay but that she was afraid of keeping the Jewel in her own time? A bitter half-chuckle escaped her at the thought. At any rate, she still wasn't ready to see them together, not for any reason. Maybe that was a little selfish, but it was true nonetheless.

_No_, she thought_, I'm not going to take the Jewel back unless…_

Kagome shook her head. In the gloom she held her left hand in front of her face, slowly opening and closing it. It popped and protested with every motion and she stared at it in silence, carefully flexing her fingers one by one. The first knuckle of each finger ached dully with the slight arthritis she would always carry with her, her souvenir from Okinawa.

"You," she said in a cold, quiet voice. "I'll return the Jewel to the past if _you_ come back again."

For the first night in weeks Kagome didn't dream about Inuyasha. She dreamt of fog lamp eyes, blue fire, and burning buildings.


	17. Nightfall

Kirara snapped her head to the side, her nostrils flaring and eyes narrowing as she peered into the forest below. Sango leaned as far over as she dared as she followed the creature's gaze, and was surprised to actually catch a fleeting glimpse of Inuyasha's cloak between the trees. Since morning that had been following him blindly, only tracking him by scent and never actually catching sight of him. For what seemed like endless hours they had followed his meandering trail as he apparently wandered through the forest at random. At one point Kirara had picked up his scent uncomfortably close to a village, but then Inuyasha had changed direction, retreating further into the woods. Though Sango had watched for him until her vision began to blur, she could never make him out through the thick canopy of trees, and her only solace was that he had thus far kept away from the numerous small villages that dotted the area. Now, as the sky began to blaze with the first trappings of sunset, they had caught up with him at last.

Sango squeezed Kirara with her thighs, silently ordering her to descend nearer the forest. She unconsciously adjusted her grip on the hiraikotsu, her hunter instincts acting unbidden. Sango swore silently to herself as Inuyasha's darting form once again disappeared amongst the trees. Kirara chuffed, circling nearer to the trees as she tried to regain his scent. Sango squinted, her eyes darting back and forth as she searched for Inuyasha between trees that were now almost close enough to touch.

_Can I really do this_, she thought, remembering so long ago when it was all she could do to hold her own against Inuyasha despite having a Jewel shard lodged into her back. _Can I stop him without killing him?_

Then a darker thought intruded into her mind.

_Can I kill him if I must?_

Suddenly there was a bellow of rage from below, and Sango had barely left her thoughts when Inuyasha's filthy, twisted face suddenly loomed in her vision. Kirara reared back, trying to interject herself between Sango and Inuyasha, but the sudden movement cost Sango her balance. Inuyasha's leap, probably from an unseen tree limb, carried him easily over Kirara's head, and he was upon Sango before she could so much as raise the hiraikotsu to deflect him. Sango struggled with him briefly, feeling his claws press into her shoulders through the thin armor of her slayer's uniform, but her right arm was entangled in the hirakotsu's grip. Inuyasha growled at her, his mouth a twisted chasm of fangs, and she writhed in vain to twist away from him before she realized in stomach churning horror that they were both falling. She heard Kirara's roar of anger and surprise just before the first of many branches hit her.

* * *

Kagome was laying on the floor doing her homework when it finally happened. The disaster sirens began to blare just before the special report came on, and somewhere in between her world came to an end.

"The Self-Defense Force has confirmed a sighting at Tokyo. Repeat, a sighting has been confirmed at Tokyo by the Self-Defense Force. Stay tuned for evacuation procedures."

Kagome was on her feet before the announcer had even finished his statement, and the only thing she could think to do was run. She pushed past her mother, who had walked out of the kitchen with a wet dish still in her hand, and threw open the door. Somewhere behind her she heard the dish shatter as she stumbled into the grass. The night was cloudless and the sky seemed impossibly empty. The moon had hidden itself away, and bloated masses of smoke rose up to blot out the stars. She stumbled as she towards the shrine's ornate Shinto gate, her ankle twisting painfully as she lost her footing in the slippery grass. Although tears leapt at her eyes she sprinted as best she could until she came to the top of the shrine's ancient steps. She nearly overbalanced and tumbled down the worn stone stairs, but managed to stop herself by the barest of margins. Her breath was ragged from both exertion and the smoke stinging her lungs, and it was a long moment before she collected herself enough to look at the city below.

Tokyo was in flames. From where she stood it looked as if the power to all of downtown had been cut, but the buildings were illuminated by the sea of fire that engulfed them. Macabre shadows danced through the ruins as crumbling buildings shifted and finally gave way entirely, dying in clouds of smoke and dirt that rose like ghosts above the funeral pyre that had once been the business district. For a few seconds of forever Kagome stood transfixed on the destruction, then a sound she remembered all too well reached her ears. Thundering footsteps, punctuated by a clarion roar that began like a distant rumble before gathering into a hateful crescendo, echoed up from the ruins of the city. Her heart stopped, and she frantically scanned the scene below for the source. Cold dread filled her as she found what she had known from the start she would see.

It was him. After eleven years, it was him, the one from Okinawa. Though he was impossibly tall, at this distance his black hide concealed him against the charred backdrop of the city. His eyes, those dead eyes burning with white hot evil, shone malignantly in the darkness. At his feet there was a constantly retreating line of popgun fire from the Self-Defense Force's heavy artillery. Here and there more popguns fired from the side streets and rooftops, and flashes of the beast's body were revealed by the exploding munitions which did nothing to pierce its scaly flesh. For an instant Kagome crazily thought that the beast was encircled by disembodied souls, then she realized with a start that the lights which sporadically appeared around the monster's chest and head were muzzle flashes from the chain guns on the SDF helicopters. Blue flames leapt from the beast's mouth and one of the chain guns was forever silenced.

Kagome's legs wobbled before giving way, and she sank gracelessly to her knees. After everything she had seen in the feudal era, it all came to this, and despite the bravery she had been able to muster in battling the demons of the past, when faced her own demon she could only watch in awe and terror. Tears leapt at her eyes, she uttered a thin, choking cry. The Shikon Jewel around her neck was ablaze with unearthly light, and it tugged insistently at the chain the held it to her, reaching out to the monster below as the creature let loose another earsplitting roar. More footsteps thundered as the beast came to claim the jewel.

"So these dreams belong to you," Kikyo muttered quietly.

Kagome's snapped her head back in surprise, only to be met with the sight of Kikyo kneeling in the grass only inches away, her face awash with tears. At first she thought that Kikyo was hugging herself in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, then she saw that the priestess was cradling her left hand against her body. Kagome's eyes widened in horror as she saw that the fingers were set at odd angles, the palm misshapen from broken bones pressing angrily against the skin. Then she became aware of her own pain, and looked down to find _her_ left hand broken and twisted, marked with a perfect heel print just as it had been when she was four years old.

"These dreams are _yours_," Kikyo repeated insistently, accusingly, her voice trembling with a strange mix of understanding, terror, and betrayal.

* * *

Though they had been only a few feet above the trees, it seemed to Sango as if she and Inuyasha fell forever. Even as she struggled against his inhuman strength she couldn't help but notice his dead, cloudy eyes. Though his face was twisted into a mask of hatred, his eyes, once the color of warm honey, now had no luster to them at all. Even as the demon slayer inside of her frantically worked to formulate a plan, the woman in her choked back a sob at the sight of her lover's blank, awful stare. Then his teeth snapped shut scant inches from her face and Sango's instincts returned to her. She caught hold of his once-shimmering hair with her left hand, pulling his head away from her own. Then, using the hiraikotsu for added momentum, she threw her right arm across his back and twisted into him. Bracing herself as best she could against his chest, Sango rode Inuyasha to the ground, letting his half-bred body absorb most of the impact. 

Sango wasn't as prepared as she would have liked to have been when they finally hit, and she landed far more awkwardly than she had hoped. Though she had firmly planted her knees in Inuyasha's stomach in the hopes of further dampening her fall, he tried at the last moment to throw her off and she had ended up landing chest to chest with him, losing all of her wind in a painful gasp. She was dimly aware of Inuyasha's head bouncing grotesquely against the forest floor.

Her own vision dimmed from the impact and the pain, and she rolled off of Inuyasha's chest weakly, coughing and sputtering as she tried to get her breath. At some point during their fall she had let go of the hiraikotsu, but as she lay gasping for breath it seemed rather unimportant. Sango's eyelids felt heavy, and she dimly realized that she probably had a concussion. Slowly she collected herself and mustered the strength to sit up.

Inuyasha groaned beside her, and Sango watched in horror as he rolled over, shaking his head to free himself of his daze, and rose to one knee. Blood trickled from his mouth and ears, running down his bedraggled cloak. Though he had taken the brunt of the fall, his demonic constitution was even stronger than she had realized, and once again Inuyasha had the advantage. Inuyasha rose shakily to his feet, staring dumbly into space for a moment before noticing Sango again. When he saw her, Inuyasha uttered a strange, anguished cry and immediately dove for her, claws outstretched and gleaming in the fading sunlight.

Sango managed to throw herself backwards, at the same time hurling a handful of dirt at Inuyasha's face. His mad dive for her sent him reeling off balance, and Sango staggered to her feet as Inuyasha stumbled to his knees. Inuyasha composed himself far more quickly than she had expected, and this time Sango couldn't put enough distance between them when he leapt at her. They wrestled briefly on their feet before falling to the ground. Inuyasha made no noise but for loud, angry grunts, and in his mad hunger he seemed to forget his claws, striving only to bite, to taste sweet blood and flesh. Sango caught hold of his cloak, using it as a handhold to keep his snapping jaws at bay. Now that they were on solid ground she could use her leverage more effectively, but she knew well enough that even in his dazed and injured state Inuyasha was just too strong to hold off for long. Soon her arms were shaking badly, threatening to buckle at any moment. Inuyasha leaned over her, pressing forward with his mouth agape, trying to close the ever-narrowing distance between his fangs and Sango's face.

Despite his supernatural strength, Inuyasha was still a small man in stature and, more importantly, weight. As a youth, Sango had been instructed in hand-to-hand techniques as part of her exterminator trainer. While she had privately had her misgivings about the need for such things she had nonetheless trained in them diligently, and now she finally found a use for them. Sango placed her feet in Inuyasha's hips and waited patiently for him to overbalance himself. With the last of her strength, Sango pushed back on his shoulders, and Inuyasha reacted just as she hoped he would by throwing his weight forward in resistance. As she felt his weight surge forward, Sango pushed up on his hips and tugged down on his collar, neatly flipping him off of her. He made a clumsy grab for her as she stood up, and without thinking she drove a knee sharply into his face.

Expecting a renewed struggle, Sango was taken completely off guard when Inuyasha simply released her. His arms fell to his sides and he simply sat on his knees before her. A small trail of blood ran down his cheek from the cut that the point of her knee had made, but the small wound had already closed and begun to heal before the blood had even dried. Sango could have sworn that the Tetsusaiga, which almost miraculously still hung at his hip, was pulsing visibly, and for an instant Inuyasha's eyes seemed to clear. She was unable to stop herself from reaching out to him, but then his face darkened once more and she sucked in a deep breath as he shifted his weight in preparation to spring.

Sango retreated a few steps, deftly flicking a small barbed dart from its hiding place in her sleeve. Little more than a needlelike spike with a pair of sharpened barbs at one end, the dart was envenomed with the paralytic toxin of a demon centipede. It was intended to slow down or disable particularly large or powerful demons so that they might be more easily dispatched. She had retrieved it from the armory months ago upon her last return to the slayer village with Naraku in mind, never expecting to use it against one of her companions. Now, as Inuyasha charged her with another graceless lunge, she sent it streaking at his chest.

The dart hit home with the dull, queasy sound of parting flesh. A mortal man would have collapsed instantly in a heap as the poison shut down his motor functions, but Inuyasha somehow, impossibly, stayed on his feet. He looked stupidly at the dart protruding from his chest, then back up at Sango. His face was no longer twisted with hatred, but Sango found his bland, drugged look even more horrible, if only because it combined with his clouded, lightless eyes to give him a look of living death. Slowly, incredibly, he took a step towards her, limply raising his clawed hands. Sango fell back a pace, but to her amazement Inuyasha advanced yet another step.

From somewhere behind her came Kirara's low growl. Sango had somehow forgotten about Kirara in the confusion of the fight, and it must have taken her a few moments to find a landing spot amongst the dense woods. Sango dared a brief glance at her companion, who was galloping protectively towards her.

Inuyasha made a small gurgling sound, and Sango looked back to see him collapse to the ground like a discarded doll. In the soft purple light of evening that filtered through the trees, Sango could see a few streaks of black suddenly ripple through Inuyasha's dirty white hair. His claws seemed to retreat into his fingertips, and his ears folded back and suddenly seemed to vanish against his head. As the last rays of sunlight finally gave way to nightfall the transformation was complete, and Inuyasha lay before not as a half-breed, but as a man. Soon she would see if his curse was lifted. Soon, she hoped, he would be free.

Then elation turned to horror as Sango caught sight of the pool of blood spreading darkly across the soil beneath him, blood from the wound inflicted as he fell forward onto her dart, driving it deep into his now very mortal chest.


	18. Waking Up

For a silent eternity Sango stood transfixed, waiting for Inuyasha to move, to sit up, to swear at her, to do anything. Many times in the past she had seen him shrug off wounds that would have killed a mortal man instantly, but now he lay motionless, a small dart wedged between his ribs. On an ordinary night it would have been but a minor annoyance to Inuyasha, but not tonight. Tonight the moon had hidden itself away and the stars seemed to stare down out of the night sky like the shining, hateful eyes of a thousand lurking demons. Now his demon blood lay dormant, and he _was_ a mortal man, and Sango knew well enough that wounds he would ordinarily ignore could now prove quite fatal. Blood oozed lazily out from beneath his unmoving form.

Finally her shock gave way to horror and she rushed to his side. She frantically checked for the pulse in his neck and found it beating weakly. Though she was teetering on the edge of panic, her years of combat training were taking hold. With some difficultly Sango managed to roll him onto his back. Covered in blood, the wound was difficult to see in the poor light, but it looked more or less like any other puncture wound she had encountered. Only a small fraction of the dart was still visible; the rest had been pushed into Inuyasha's chest when he collapsed onto it. She saw with some relief that the dart had struck him too high on his chest and too far from his breastbone to have pierced his heart. Sango gently lay two fingers on either side of the protruding weapon and grimaced a little as she felt it pulsing. By the pulsing she guessed that the dart was either resting against or actually piercing a large blood vessel, and in either case she dared not remove it for fear of causing uncontrollable bleeding.

Inuyasha's face was cool and clammy, a product not only of shock but also of the demon centipede venom that was racing through his veins. Though the poison itself only caused paralysis, Sango feared that it could cause serious problems when combined with the copious bleeding the dart had caused. She quickly untied her sash, ignoring the scabbard of her katana as it clattered to the ground, and used it to gingerly wipe the blood away from the injury. Though new blood began to well up around the dart, its flow was not as steady as she had feared. Deciding not to take any unnecessary risks, Sango removed Inuyasha's cloak with minimal struggling and tightly knotted her sash around his slender upper body to bind the wound. It was far from an ideal bandage, and she had to be careful not to tighten it so much as to hinder Inuyasha's breathing, but it would have to do for the time being.

Although it was almost crazy to be distracted by such things given the situation, Sango found her eyes lingering on Inuyasha's body. While his demonic blood flowed through his veins, his muscles seemed to be tightly bound around his frame like perpetually draw bowstrings. In his human form, despite his lean, muscular appearance, he seemed somehow softer, more vulnerable. It was a strange sensation to see him like this, and the cascade of black hair that spilled out beneath his head and clung to his sweating shoulders made it seem all the more unreal. Then he convulsed a little, as side effect of the poison working itself through his system, and Sango realized for the first time that she was crying. She drew his head up onto her lap and draped his cloak over him to protect him from the chill of the night.

"I'm sorry Inuyasha," she whispered. "I'm so sorry."

Kirara watched Sango and Inuyasha from a distance, and whether by instinct or intellect she knew to leave them be. The yokai willed herself to change into her smaller form and quietly kept vigil over her companions. The scent of blood hung thickly in the air, but Kirara was well aware of the salty scent of tears that mingled with it. Kirara sat silently for a moment, and when Sango began to sing quietly, reciting from heart a song that even Kirara remembered from long, long ago, she cocked her head to listen

Undetected even by Kirara's keen senses, a soul collector floated listlessly above the trees, its serpentine body twisting on night wind like a silver ribbon. It had been sent by its mistress to watch over a certain soul, and despite its minimal intellect it was puzzled by the change it had sensed in its quarry. It wheeled in a lazy circle trying to discern what was going on below it. By instinct it knew that the soul hadn't disconnected from its mortal container, but _something_ strange had happened. After a long period of indecision, the creature turned away from its erstwhile target and flew off in search of its mistress.

* * *

Kagome awoke midway between the bed and the floor, and her surprised gasp was cut off as she landed clumsily on the rug. Her light was still on, and the paperback she had gone to bed reading, _Ends of the Earth: The Truth Story of the Starkweather-Moore Expedition_, lay on the floor next to her. A warm wind blew lazily in through the curtains, bringing with it the clean smell of a summer night. For the briefest instant a fragment from her dream intruded on reality and she thought she smelled smoke on the breeze, but the illusion passed quickly as the nightmare dissolved from her mind.

_I must've fallen asleep_, she thought to herself.

Kagome absentmindedly picked up her book and dog-eared a page near to where she had drifted off. She sat on the floor for a while, reading the back cover and trying not to think about the dream. Except for Kikyo, it wasn't unlike the usual nightmare, the one that had come to her sporadically since she was a little girl. She set the book back down on the floor and drew her knees to her chest, hugging her legs. Her left forefinger popped loudly and she frowned. It was funny, in a way, that her family didn't think she remembered what happened when she was four even though her left hand would always serve as a reminder.

It was a memory she didn't enjoying reliving and she rarely spoke of it, but the truth was that what had happened was always lurking on the periphery of her mind. In the feudal era it somehow seemed less important, just one more encounter with a demon in a world full of demons, but in the modern era it was seemed so much _closer_. Having a large fragment of the Shikon Jewel hanging around her neck certainly did nothing to ease her mind. She was sure that she had felt it grow warmer for no reason, and once she awoke and would have swore it was tring to pull away from her in the small hours of the night. A shudder rippled through her even now as she mulled over the matter.

She thought that maybe it was because of all the demons in the feudal era that she had never told Inuyasha about what had happened. He'd have just given her that cocky, lopsided sneer and asked her why she was afraid of _that_ demon more than any of the others. Maybe it wasn't the sneer she was worried about, for she had seen that sneer hundreds of times and had come to admire the fiery sparkle it brought out in Inuyasha's eyes. Kagome thought, looking back, that she wasn't afraid of his derision but of having come to terms with the fact that there were some things about her Inuyasha would never understand.

She had come close to telling Sango once as well, but it seemed silly to tell someone who was trained from birth to slay demons about a recurring nightmare and a bad experience from her childhood. She knew that Sango wouldn't think the less of her for it, but the truth was that she admired Sango more than any woman she had ever met, except perhaps her mother, and telling her about the nightmares would only confirm in her own mind that she would never be as strong as her friend.

_Inuyasha and Sango are both so strong_, Kagome thought, sighing quietly. _Maybe that's what drew them to each other. Inuyasha always_ did_ say I just got in the way…_

She closed her eyes for a long moment, then reached up onto her desk for her pen and notebook.

_I may not be as strong as Sango, but I'm not just going to run away either. _

* * *

The blue flames swirling in her vision gave way to a sea of stars shining down from the velvet blackness of the night sky and Kikyo realized that she had been dreaming again. The dewy grass clung uncomfortably to her bare feet and she was surprised to find her bow in her hand. Her eyes narrowed in annoyance at the thought of herself wandering around in her sleep, all the while having yet another nightmare. Still, she couldn't help but wonder if encountering her reincarnation was just another fantasy or it had been, in some perverse way, real.

Before she could consider the matter any further, something appeared in the sky, undulating on the wind as it passed over the edge of the forest. It was a soul collector, the one she had sent to follow Inuyasha.

Kikyo possessed a rudimentary empathic bond with the creatures, just enough to communicate with her servants on the most basic of levels, and as the demon drew nearer she could feel confusion and agitation in its mind. Once the creature was close enough, Kikyo tried to ask it what was the matter, but it was difficult to communicate with the soul collectors on so complex a level. Instead, the soul collector twined around her, pulling her in the direction of the forest.

"Inuyasha," Kikyo murmured to herself, "are you mine at last?"

The priestess reached out with her mind, bidding her other servants to appear. A half dozen soul collectors descended from the darkness above her and wrapped their snakelike bodies around her, lifting her into the air and carrying her towards what has once been called Inuyasha's Forest.

"We must always return to this place, mustn't we, Inuyasha?" Kikyo said quietly as they passed over the Bone Eater's well.

* * *

A butterfly flitted close to his face, and Inuyasha was transfixed by gentle beating of its incandescent rainbow wings despite his initial urge to swat it away. He realized, in small degrees, that he was laying in the grass, his head resting on something warm. He strained to see beyond the insect that danced in his vision, but it glowed with a soft golden light that his eyes could not penetrate.

_What the hell?_

Little by little the butterfly's radiance increased, and a fine glowing powder began to fall onto Inuyasha's face. With a jolt Inuyasha realized that the insect was not a butterfly but a moth, a moth with the wings of a butterfly, and that the powder was its shimmering scales.

_Moth poison_, Inuyasha's weary mind screamed at him, and he strained to lift his arms, to swat the creature away.

Try as he might, Inuyasha was unable to move. At first he fought agonizingly to resist to the falling powder, but slowly he felt his anger and panic melt away into a calm warmth and his ferocious will to fight dissolved into a peaceful stupor that had the sensation of slowly waking up. By and by the moth seemed to grow larger, its wing beats slowing and its flitting dance changing into long lazy circles in the sky above. Soon it was as big as bird, then even larger, filling Inuyasha's vision with its radiant colors and the strange golden light that it cast off. He felt as if he watched the moth grow forever, until finally it blotted out the entire sky.

Suddenly, as the moth reached a size that seemed nearly impossible to comprehend, Inuyasha's vision was flooded completely with its golden light. It was dazzling, though not painfully so, and Inuyasha closed his eyes to escape its brilliance. When he opened them again, a pair of soft brown eyes, watery with tears, were staring down at his own. A gentle hand cradled his head, and he was dimly aware of a finger tenderly caressing his cheek. His heart jumped in his chest as he realized who was watching over him.

"Sango…?" Inuyasha whispered, reaching up weakly to touch her face.


	19. Dawn

Author's Note – I apologize for my all too typical delay in posting this chapter. I'll try and have the next chapter up within a decent amount of time for once (I promise). Thank you to everyone who has been kind enough to take an interest in my story and patient enough to wait for this update. Hopefully you'll find that it was worth it.

By the way, forgive my ongoing formatting difficulties. Apparently someone has decided that tabs are for the weak...

-----

Sango's face was among the only things that Inuyasha remembered seeing clearly in days. She seemed to him to be almost unearthly beautiful despite the bruises and scratches that dotted her forehead and cheeks. At that very moment all he wanted in the world was to touch her, but as his hand cupped Sango's cheek, Inuyasha was startled to see that his claws were gone. The look in his eyes must have told Sango as much.

"It's the new moon, Inuyasha," she said softly, taking his hand in her own. "You're human, free of the curse that Kikyo laid on you."

"Kikyo," he repeated blandly, trying vainly to remember the past few days and finding that they existed in his mind only as a fog of anger and pain. Even now his thoughts were dull and vague, with real lucidity coming only fleetingly.

As he drew back his hand he was overcome by a sudden weakness that sent his arm flopping limply to the ground. Though his head was cushioned by Sango's lap, he assumed he was lying on the ground. A chill night wind danced mockingly across his face while in the distance crickets sang their maddening song. Inuyasha tried to move his arms again, to reach out to Sango, but his limbs disobeyed him, only lolling numbly in the grass. Attempting to move his legs yielded similarly frustrating results. Inuyasha began to speak again, but Sango put a finger to his lips, smiling softly down at him. He felt woozy, and when he closed his eyes the world seemed to spin crazily. Something inside of him was burning hot and cold at the same time, and despite Sango's embrace he felt as if he had been drenched with ice water. He was vaguely aware of a pain in his chest and tingling in his hands and feet, but when he tried to look down at himself Sango gently cupped his chin to stop him. He looked up at her questioningly and she answered him by leaning down and pressing a kiss to his lips.

"Sango, what's going on?" Inuyasha asked at last. He was surprised at how weak his own voice sounded.

"You've been poisoned Inuyasha," Sango said quietly, looking away from him. "I'm sorry, but it was the only way I could stop you…"

"Stop me," Inuyasha interrupted, his words suddenly choked off as he was seized by a fit of coughing. He tasted his own blood on his lips as he continued. "What are you talking about?"

"Hush," she whispered. "Just rest for now."

Inuyasha opened his mouth to protest but was silenced as sudden pain danced through his body. He stiffened for an instant, his teeth grinding sharply together, and Sango uttered a small, worried cry. After a moment the episode passed, and once again Inuyasha tried to sit up and examine him injuries. Sango lightly pressed one of his shoulders down, and much to Inuyasha's dismay she was easily able to restrain him. Frustrated, he struggled against her briefly, but he stopped short when her soft, loving hands cradled his face.

"Look at me, Inuyasha," Sango said, her soft brown eyes pleading with him. "Promise me you won't try to do anything else except look at me."

Inuyasha, taken aback as much by the sudden desperation in her eyes as by the fresh wave of pain that washed over him, nodded silently in reply. Sango leaned down as if to kiss him again, then reached back with one hand and untied her hair, letting it fall around his face. She filled his vision now, so close to him that he could feel her warm breath mingling with own. Inuyasha felt her slender arms tighten around him and tried to return her embrace, only to find his limbs still stubbornly immobile.

"Look at me, Inuyasha" Sango repeated, her voice wavering and then falling to a whisper. "There's no one else in the world, just you and me."

Inuyasha smiled weakly at her warm words. He tried to speak, but his voice wouldn't come to him. Staring up at her deep, soulful eyes he wanted nothing more than to comfort her despite his own pain. More agony flashed like lightning through his body, spreading angrily from deep within his chest. His weaker human self was unaccustomed to such ordeal and his eyes watered as this newest torment left him helplessly trembling. Even in the darkness the pained reaction on Sango's face was obvious. Inuyasha's head began to spin, and when Sango's embrace tightened it seemed strangely far away. Some hidden part of him fought its way to the surface and without any conscious thought he mouthed three small words to her.

"We're going to wait here together and watch the sun come up," Sango said in a thin, almost childlike voice.

------

Kagome sat looking at the envelope for a long time, turning it over and over in her hands. The floor around her was littered with crumpled balls of paper, scraps and fragments that had been discarded. Nearly five hours had passed since she began writing, and from the start the words had not flowed as she had wanted them to. Initially she had been quite careful to restrain herself, resulting in a first attempt had been so sanitary and mechanical that it felt like a form letter. In each of her next several attempts she had trailed off into nearly histrionic ranting, and after _those_ she had begun to meander around the points she was trying to make so much that her writing was barely coherent. Twice she had signed and folded a letter and sealed it neatly in an envelope only to tear it up in frustration moments later. It had been ten minutes now since the latest iteration of the letter had been completed, and this time she actually thought it might be worth the paper it was written on.

The irony of it all was that it wasn't the first time she had written a letter to Inuyasha, but it was the first and last one that he would ever receive. The others, two dozen or so, were tucked into the diary that sat safely in the drawer of her desk. Those letters were in pastel envelopes, written in gel pens of every imaginable color. The margins overflowed with absentminded doodles, the products of her wandering thoughts as she sat in class longing to return to her friends in the feudal era. Most of them were little more than products of her own whimsy and boredom, not much different from entries in her regular diary except that each one began with "Dear Inuyasha". The last few though, they were different.

Before she met Inuyasha, the last time Kagome had written anything as emotionally committal as "I think you're cute" was for a boy she had a crush on in the fourth grade. Inuyasha was the only person for whom she had _ever_ written the words "I think I'm in love with you." She had written those words and many more for him in the two months before that fateful night when she watched him kiss Sango. Feelings she could only try to express to him in person with a furtive squeeze of his hand and words the she had only spoken aloud in the smallest of whispers while looking up at her ceiling in the dead of the night were spelled out in those letters. She knew now that those were letters he would never read.

At long last she sighed and slowly got to her feet. She hovered indecisively for a moment, her glance wavering back and forth between her bed and her closet. It was nearly morning now, a Sunday, and she still had the option of sticking the letter in her drawer, pulling the covers over her head and hiding there until mid afternoon. That actually sounded pretty appealing. She sat down on her bed, slid open her desk draw listlessly and plopped the letter down unceremoniously on top of the pile. She stared at the letter for a long moment.

"This is why he's with Sango," she whispered huskily. "Because I'm not strong enough to say what I need to say to him."

Suddenly furious with herself, Kagome snatched the letter from the drawer. She crossed to her closet in a few long strides and began to dress, unaware of the hot tears slowly crawling down her cheeks. As she finished dressing and reached to pull the door to the closet shut, her eyes fell unbidden upon her bow nestled between her raincoat and her gym glass tennis racquet. Though she could think of no good reason to take it with her, she stared at the bow, and the quiver of arrows beside it, for a very long time. Then the Shikon Jewel seemed to tug almost imperceptibly at the string that bound it to her neck, and Kagome reached silently for the weapon.

-----

Sango sighed softly, her hand resting lightly on Inuyasha's bare chest to measure the rise and fall of his weak, labored breathing. There was pain in his face even as he slept, and from time to time a small tremor would pass through him as he exhaled. The bandage around his wound had turned a hateful shade of red, wet and sticky with the blood that had continued to flow, slowly but incessantly, from his wound. Sango shifted around uncomfortably, trying to jostle Inuyasha's head as little as possible. Her legs throbbed and ached from the awkward semi-kneeling position in which she had been cradling him for the past several hours, but thoughts of her own discomfort could only invade her mind for fleeting instants before being swept away by tides of guilt as she stared down at him.

The night seemed to have passed by small degrees of eternity. For a time Inuyasha had been more or less lucid, returning her whispered comforts in a pained, boyish voice that make her heart ache for him. As the night wore on he had become less and less coherent, and within the past two hours he had stopped responding to her entirely. Even after Inuyasha had fallen away into unconsciousness Sango continued to speak to him. She spoke of the elderly couple she had met in her travels, of their small home, their shrine and hearth, the sparkling glances they traded, the lifetime of mornings they must have shared in each other's arms. Something about this brought the sting of tears to her eyes, and she had cried.

Despite this slow torture, the night was finally nearing an end. At last the first strains of soft blue light had begun to creep across the sky, heralding dawn's approach. Sango allowed herself a small smile.

"It's almost morning, Inuyasha" she said quietly, stroking his face as if to wake him.

-----

Kagome struggled to pull herself out of the Bone Eater's Well, her letter to Inuyasha still in hand. Somehow she was crazily sure that if she let the letter out of her grasp for even a moment, even to put it in her pocket, she would lose her nerve and slink silently back to her own time, so she clung to it, even as it hampered her climbing. As such, she reached the top of the well only after an effort that left her eyes stinging with fresh tears of frustration.

The first light of day shone in the sky, drowning out the Shikon Jewel's eerie glow. Kagome glanced about and frowned.

_How am I even going to find him?_

She looked around for a moment, and then became aware that her free hand was resting on the lip of the well. She jerked it away as if she had been touching a snake.

_Now you're just looking for excuses to go back_, she thought bitterly to herself.

Then, just above the tree tops, something caught her eye. Kagome squinted for a moment, trying to make out just what she was seeing, and then her blood turned to ice as she recognized the object in the sky. Kikyo; borne by a handful of her soul collectors. She stood transfixed, her skin cold and covered in gooseflesh, before a quiet realization came to her.

_She's going to Inuyasha,_ Kagome thought. _I don't know how I know, but I do. Because part of us is still the same…_

Without further hesitation, Kagome followed the ghostly priestess.

-----

The sun crested slowly over the horizon, bright rays of morning filtering through the trees and turning their leaves into a sparkling sea of emeralds. Once the clearing was awash in sunlight, the transformation began. The color seemed to retreat through Inuyasha's hair, his doglike ears reappearing from beneath the sea of white, and claws emerged from his fingertips. Sango held her breath expectantly as Inuyasha began to stir in her arms. A faraway part of her shouted unheard warnings to arm herself in case the curse of hunger still lingered in Inuyasha's mind, but Sango paid no heed.

At last his eyes began to open, and Sango's heart leapt to see that they shone like amber in the afternoon sun, completely devoid of the milky, hateful look of Kikyo's curse. As he looked up at her with warm recognition, Sango let herself get lost in those eyes which she had missed so much. Inuyasha's hands, still shaking and weak, found their way to her face. Then his lips parted slightly and Sango bent to kiss them.

Kirara's growl shattered the moment's wordless perfection.

"Inuyasha," A familiar voice cried out. "Must you betray my memory at every turn?"

Her head lowered, Kikyo stood at the edge of the clearing. Her left hand clenched and unclenched on the hilt of her bow. Soul collectors danced lazily in the sky around her, but as the priestess's shoulders began to shake even her demon servants retreated from their mistress's fury. With no further words, Kikyo drew an arrow from her quiver.

Author's Note – The climax of "Closer" is fast approaching. As fun little bonus (though that may be too strong a word) to the readers who have been willing to deal with all my delays and other idiosyncrasies, I'm going to put a little contest (that may also be too strong a word) out on the table. As some of you have already realized, there are references in this story to lots of stuff that isn't part of Inuyasha, including real people, movies, and literature. The contest, such as it is, is this: Interested readers (if any remain), can reach me at the e-mail address listed in my profile. The reader who can _identify and explain_ to my satisfaction the most outside references in this story will get to dictate the outcome of either an alternate ending or a special epilogue which I will write to the winner's specifications. I ask that anyone inclined to participate please do so via my e-mail rather than the review function. Please put "Closer" in the subject line of the e-mail. Try and be as specific as possible when identifying references. (If references to the same thing occur in multiple chapters, at least note which chapters.) Some of the references are fairly obvious, while at least one is almost unforgivably obtuse. The deadline for submission is June 8th, the date on which I plan to post the next chapter of "Closer".

I hope at least some of you will decide to give it a try. ,


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